Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T13:25:10.320Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What Setting Limits May Mean A Feminist Critique of Daniel Callahan's Setting Limits

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Nora K. Bell
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In Setting Limits, Daniel Callahan advances the provocative thesis that age be a limiting factor in decisions to allocate certain kinds of health services to the elderly. However, when one looks at available data, one discovers that there are many more elderly women than there are elderly men, and these older women are poorer, more apt to live alone, and less likely to have informal social and personal supports than their male counterparts. Older women, therefore, will make the heaviest demand on health care resources. If age were to become a limiting factor, as Dr. Callahan sug-gests it should, the limits that will be set are limits that will affect women more dras” tically than they affect men. This review essay examines the implications of Callahan's thesis for elderly women.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 4 , Issue 2: Special Issue: Feminist Ethics and Medicine , Summer 1989 , pp. 169 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agoing America: Trends and projections. 1983. US Senate Special Committee on Aging (in conjunction with AARP). Washington, DC.Google Scholar
America in transition: An aging society. 1985. US Senate Special Committee on Aging. Washington, DC. 99‐B.Google Scholar
A profile of older Americans 1986. American Association of Retired Persons. Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Bergmann, Barbara. 1986. The economic emergence of women. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Butler, R.N. 1975. Why survive? Being old in America. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Callahan, Daniel. 1987. Setting limits: Medical goals in an aging society. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Childress, James F. 1984. Ensuring care, respect, and fairness for the elderly. The Hastings Center Report 14 (5): 27–31.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Day, Alice T. 1984. Who cares? Demographic trends challenge family care for the elderly.Populations Trends and Public Policy. Washington, DC: Population Reference Bureau, Inc.Google Scholar
Elder abuse reports are growing in SC. 1988. The State. Columbia, SO June 5. Long term care: A review of the evidence. 1986. University of Minnesota, School of Public Health: Division of Health Services.Google Scholar
May, William. 1982. Who cares for the elderly? The Hastings Center Report 12 (6): 31–37.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Projections of the population of the US by age, sex and race: 1983–2080. Washington, DC: US Bureau of the Census. Series P‐25, 952.Google Scholar
Reskin, Barbara and Hartmann, H. eds., 1986. Women's work, men's work. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.Google Scholar
Waldo, Daniel and Lazenby, H. 1984. Demographic characteristics and health care use and expenditures by the aged in the US: 1977–1984 Health Care Financing Review 6 (1).Google Scholar