California Governor Jerry Brown signed right-to-die legislation into law on Monday, but the issue of whether suffering people should be able to control their own deaths has been debated for centuries. Take, for example, this 1929 TIME story about a son and his dead mother.
In 1929, a Frenchman named Richard Corbett shot his mother. She was dying of cancer, doctors said there was no hope for her, and he described her life as “suffering torture,” but he was tried for her murder nonetheless. A jury found him not guilty and, perhaps sensing that this debate would rage for at least another 80 years, TIME staffers sought comment and opinions from the major thinkers of the day.
Here’s what Albert Einstein had to say: “I approve unqualifiedly the action of Richard Corbett, and I am happy in his acquittal by the French court, where a healthy feeling for the spirit of justice triumphed over the dead letter of the law.”
George Bernard Shaw didn’t agree: “It is impossible to have a state of affairs in which one person may shoot another and then allege it was a sort of suicide by deputy. Suicide cannot be permitted by deputy.”
Other luminaries of the time also debated the issue, some of whom are less familiar to our modern audiences. But rest assured: as long as people have been living and dying, there have been debates about how to do both.
Christian Werner in Post-War Iraq: A Photographer Investigates a Health Crisis
Apr. 18, 2012. Fallujah. A man holds his daughter, who became sick from swallowing dust from the road after the war in 2003.Christian Werner—laif/ReduxApr. 17, 2012. Baghdad. A family passes a car full of bullet holes.Christian Werner—laif/ReduxApr. 18, 2012. Fallujah. An elderly woman holds her granddaughter's hand inside an incubator in the neonatal ward of the General Hospital. The child was born with leukemia and cerebral tumors.Christian Werner—laif/ReduxApr. 18, 2012. Baghdad. Three children clean a grave with water from a battered canister at a cemetery.Christian Werner—laif/ReduxApr. 18, 2012. Baghdad. A woman prays at the cemetery for her dead son.Christian Werner—laif/ReduxApr. 19, 2012. Hurriya District, Baghdad. A woman looks out the window of her house riddled with bullet holes.Christian Werner—laif/ReduxApr. 21, 2012. Basra. A few obsolete tanks, left over from the fighting, near the airport.
Christian Werner—laif/ReduxApr. 21, 2012. Basra. A horse cart drives along the tracks on the outskirts of the city.Christian Werner—laif/ReduxApr. 21, 2012. Basra. Two boys by the grave of a young girl in the children's cemetery.Christian Werner—laif/ReduxApr. 22, 2012. Basra. The bodies of dead children receive a ritual washing in a room at the children's cemetery before they are buried.Christian Werner—laif/ReduxApr. 22, 2012. Basra. The hand of a stillborn baby is wrapped in linen cloth.Christian Werner—laif/ReduxApr. 23, 2012. Basra. An old man prays for his grandson, who suffers from leukemia, inside the Children's Hospital.Christian Werner—laif/ReduxApr. 23, 2012. Basra. An oncologist examines a young boy with cerebral tumors in the Children's Hospital.Christian Werner—laif/ReduxApr. 24, 2012. Basra. A young boy, who suffers from a cerebral tumor, is unable to use his legs or hands despite several operations.Christian Werner—laif/ReduxApr. 24, 2012. Basra. An infant girl, who suffers from leukemia and two different length legs, lies on the floor in pain.Christian Werner—laif/ReduxApr. 24, 2012. Basra. New patients receive intravenous pain medication at the leukemia ward of the Al-Sadr Teaching Hospital. Christian Werner—laif/ReduxApr. 24, 2012. Basra. An elderly woman carries the linen-wrapped body of a stillborn baby at the children’s cemetery.Christian Werner—laif/ReduxApr. 23, 2012. Basra. A man holds his four-year-old daughter, who was born with a deformed back and water in her head, and who doctors have given a slim chance of survival.Christian Werner—laif/ReduxOct. 24, 2012. Basra. Three members of one family, all of whom were were born with an eye mutation, sit for a portrait.Christian Werner—laif/ReduxOct. 22, 2012. Basra. An undertaker prays for a stillborn boy who is wrapped in linen cloth before his burial at the children's cemetery.Christian Werner—laif/ReduxOct. 23, 2012. Basra. A boy sick with cancer and a tumor behind an eye rests in the Children's Hospital.Christian Werner—laif/ReduxOct. 23, 2012. Basra. A section of graves in the children's cemetery.Christian Werner—laif/ReduxOct. 24, 2012. Near Basra. A 10-year-old boy receives dialysis at a hospital as his mother prays and rests her hand on his head. A large portion of a tumor on his shoulder was removed the day earlier.Christian Werner—laif/Redux