Seven Reasons Why Euthanasia Should Not Be Legalized
Seven Reasons Why Euthanasia Should Not Be Legalized
1. The 'justification' of voluntary euthanasia involves rejection of a tenet fundamental to a just framework of laws in society
Voluntary euthanasia is the killing of a patient at his or her request in the belief that death would be a benefit to the patient and that the killing is for that reason justified. The mere fact that someone says, in an un-coerced fashion, that he or she wants to be killed does not in itself provide a doctor with a reason for thinking death would be a benefit to that patient. No doctor would accede to an apparently naked request to be killed, however seemingly un-coerced, if he thought the patient had prospects of a worthwhile life. A request to be killed appears to be a ground for euthanasia killing only if the doctor believes that the patient does not have a worthwhile life.
Now, to say that the ongoing life of a person lacks value amounts to denying value or worth to that person, since the reality of a person is not something distinct from his or her ongoing life. What underpins euthanasia killing are judgments on the overall worth of certain human lives.
It would be contrary to any legal system which purports to protect and enforce a just social order to legalize killing which rests for its justification on the belief that certain lives lack worth. Why? Because justice in society itself requires a non-arbitrary and non-discriminatory way of identifying who are the subjects of justice. But the only way of avoiding arbitrariness in identifying the subjects of justice is to assume that all human beings, simply in virtue of being human, are entitled to be treated justly and are the subjects of certain basic human rights. In other words the basic human dignity and worth which are recognized in respecting human rights must be seen as attaching to our humanity. Basic dignity and worth would not, however, be a title to just treatment if human beings were thought capable of losing them. They are, so to speak, in eliminable features of our humanity.
Euthanasia killing, even when it is voluntary, involves denial of the ongoing worth of the lives of those reckoned to be candidates for euthanasia. It is a type of killing, therefore, which cannot be accommodated in a legal...