Description:

Anna Terwiel
Doctoral Student, Political Theory
Graduate Affiliate, MH&B Program
Northwestern University

Autonomous Patients, Human Weapons, and Other Ways to Think of Hunger Strikers in Prison

The World Medical Association argues that physicians should treat hunger strikers as autonomous patients. The principle of autonomy gives such protesters the right to refuse medical treatment, including artificial feeding, provided their refusal is informed and voluntary. It also aligns with how hunger strikers often describe their self-starvation: as a rational, deliberate “weaponization” of their body or their life. However, I argue that the framework of patient autonomy undermines rather than secures hunger striking as a protest practice. Carceral authorities and courts often successfully contest that prisoners’ decisions are indeed informed and voluntary and thereby justify forced feedings. More fundamentally, the principle of autonomy misses the point that hunger strikers starve themselves not simply as a free personal choice but in a bid to affect others and create change. Rather than include hunger strikers in medical ethics as autonomous patients, I argue, we should refuse to frame hunger striking as a medical issue altogether.