Polls show that a vast majority of Americans support the legalization of physician-assisted suicide. This makes sense, if only because our culture has made absolute personal autonomy sacrosanct and bought into the idea that we have no business telling others how they should conduct themselves.

But for all the promise of autonomy delivered by these advocates of physician-assisted suicide, it’s clear that the claim is not all it’s cracked up to be. Indeed, for every story in which a person gets the opportunity to exercise autonomy, we hear a story from someone who is sick or vulnerable about how their autonomy was taken away.