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Euthanasia

The document discusses euthanasia and assisted suicide. Euthanasia is deliberately ending a person's life to relieve suffering, while assisted suicide is deliberately assisting another person to kill themselves. Both are currently illegal in England and Denmark. Arguments for legalizing assisted suicide include the right to control one's own life and death, while religious arguments oppose it because they believe only God can decide when a person dies.

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Andreas Nydam
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38 views

Euthanasia

The document discusses euthanasia and assisted suicide. Euthanasia is deliberately ending a person's life to relieve suffering, while assisted suicide is deliberately assisting another person to kill themselves. Both are currently illegal in England and Denmark. Arguments for legalizing assisted suicide include the right to control one's own life and death, while religious arguments oppose it because they believe only God can decide when a person dies.

Uploaded by

Andreas Nydam
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Euthanasia and assisted suicide

Euthanasia is the act of deliberately ending a person's life to relieve


suffering.

For example, it could be considered euthanasia if a doctor deliberately gave a patient with a
terminal illness a drug they do not otherwise need, such as an overdose of sedatives or muscle
relaxant, with the sole aim of ending their life.

Assisted suicide is the act of deliberately assisting another person to kill themselves. If a relative of
a person with a terminal illness obtained strong sedatives, knowing the person intended to use
them to kill themselves, the relative may be considered to be assisting suicide.

The law
Both euthanasia and assisted suicide are illegal under English and Danish law.

Assisted suicide
Assisted suicide is illegal under the terms of the Suicide Act (1961) and is punishable by up to 14
years' imprisonment. Trying to kill yourself is not a criminal act.

Pro-euthanasia arguments
Regulating euthanasia
Those in favour of euthanasia think that there is no reason why euthanasia can't be controlled
by proper regulation, but they acknowledge that some problems will remain.

For example, it will be difficult to deal with people who want to implement euthanasia for selfish
reasons or pressurise vulnerable patients into dying. This is little different from the position with
any crime. The law prohibits theft, but that doesn't stop bad people stealing things.

Human right?
Many people think that each person has the right to control his or her body and life and so should
be able to determine at what time, in what way and by whose hand he or she will die.
Behind this lies the idea that human beings should be as free as possible - and that unnecessary
restraints on human rights are a bad thing.

And behind that lies the idea that human beings are independent biological entities, with the right
to take and carry out decisions about themselves, providing the greater good of society doesn't
prohibit this. Allied to this is a firm belief that death is the end.

Religious objections
Religious opponents disagree because they believe that the right to decide when a person dies
belongs to God.

Other human rights imply a right to die


Without creating (or acknowledging) a specific right to die, it is possible to argue that other human
rights ought to be taken to include this right.
The right to life includes the right to die
• The right to life is not a right simply to exist
• The right to life is a right to life with a minimum quality and value
• Death is the opposite of life, but the process of dying is part of life
• But even if there is a right to die, that doesn't mean that doctors have a duty to kill, so no
doctor can be forced to help the patient who wants euthanasia.

Moral rules must be universalisable


One of the commonly accepted principles in ethics, put forward by Immanuel Kant, is that only
those ethical principles that could be accepted as a universal rule (i.e. one that applied to
everybody) should be accepted.

So you should only do something if you're willing for anybody to do exactly the same thing in
exactly similar circumstances, regardless of who they are.

The justification for this rule is hard to find - many people think it's just an obvious truth. You find
variations of this idea in many faiths; for example "do unto others as you would have them do unto
you”.

To put it more formally: A rule is universalisable if it can consistently be willed as a law that
everyone ought to obey. The only rules which are morally good are those which can be
universalised.

Euthanasia happens - better to make it legal and regulate it properly


Sounds a bit like "murder happens - better to make it legal and regulate it properly”.

When you put it like that, the argument sounds very feeble indeed.

But it is one that is used a lot in discussion, and particularly in politics or round the table in the pub
or the canteen.

People say things like "we can't control drugs so we'd better legalise them", or "if we don't make
abortion legal so that people can have it done in hospital, people will die from backstreet
abortions”.

What lies behind it is Utilitarianism: the belief that moral rules should be designed to produce the
greatest happiness of the greatest number of people.
If you accept this as the basis for your ethical code (and it's the basis of many people's ethics),
then the arguments above are perfectly sensible.
If you don't accept this principle, but believe that certain things are wrong regardless of what effect
they have on total human happiness, then you will probably regard this argument as cynical and
wrong.

Questions:
• What are some of the pros (positive) for assisted suicide mentioned in the text?
• What are some cons (negative)? - write down your own thoughts
• Who should “do it”?
• Should assisted suicide be legal?
• Why/why not?

Sources:
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/euthanasia-and-assisted-suicide/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/euthanasia/infavour/infavour_1.shtml

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