Kindle Notes & Highlights
It is the second injection that causes death.
euthanasia allows for a change of mind as much as PAD.
It is the creation and implementation of the eligibility and due care criteria, not the method of causing death, that matters.
be unable to self-administer
3
What is the equal protection argument for PAD?
argue that competent patients also have a legal right to die by self-administered PAD.
What is often called "voluntary passive euthanasia" is legal (see Schloenndorff case, p. 26, ch. 2)
Either both groups of patients have the right to die or neither does.
Where is self-administered PAD legal in the United States?
What is the legal status of PAD elsewhere in the world?
What are the moral arguments in favor of PAD?
Supporters of PAD maintain that when people have incurable illnesses that cause them great suffering, they should have the right to medical assistance that will provide them with a good death.
argument from suffering
should not be forced to go through unbearable and unrelievable suffering if that individual prefers a quick and painless death.
euthanizi...
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argument from autonomy
people should be able to make the most important decisions about how their lives go
how they die
some would opt for PAD in the face of terminal illness even if, as the hospice movement claims, physical suffering in terminally ill patients can almost always be controlled or managed.
some would want to hasten their deaths, even if they were not experiencing any physical suffering, to avoid living into severe dementia.
What are the moral arguments against PAD?
the role of physicians
palliative care.
legalizing PAD could weaken society’s commitment to providing palliative care to dying patients.
option of PAD to dying patients imposes a terrible burden on them.
slippery slope.
Is PAD inconsistent with the physician’s role?
why is the physicians’ role limited to palliative care? It is not enough to say, “Doctors do not kill,”
Indeed, trust might be strengthened if patients know that they will not be abandoned by their doctors when they are dying
Would legalizing PAD undermine palliative care?
Does legalizing PAD create a slippery slope?
it is not enough to point to the Netherlands and say, “They allow euthanasia for infants.” Instead, we should ask whether allowing infant euthanasia in certain restricted cases is a bad outcome of their policy or its logical and acceptable extension.
Once we decide which outcomes really would be unjustifiable, then we can attempt to determine whether there are effective safeguards to prevent such outcomes.
the DWDA
has not expanded beyond the terminally ill;
mere expansion of eligibility criteria does not necessarily indicate a slippery slope.
If the reasons for allowing people access to PAD are respect for autonomy and prevention of unbearable suffering, why should it be limited to cases of terminal illness?
(ALS,
People with ALS may have greater suffering than those who are terminally ill simply because they live longer.
If the goal of assisted dying is to prevent intolerable and unrelievable suffering, the limitation to those predicted to die relatively quickly seems arbitrary and unjustified.
Is there really a need for PAD?
doubts that the need for legalized euthanasia is sufficiently great to justify running the risk of mistake and abuse.
a doctor, knowing that a patient is ready to die, may write a prescription for sleeping pills with a “warning”
if doctors know they face criminal liability for helping their patients to die, they will only do it in the few cases where it is really warranted.
It is unfair to ask medical personnel to risk of serious criminal charges to help their suffering patients achieve the kind of death they want.
Concluding thoughts
The moral arguments from suffering and autonomy support a strong prima facie right on the part of individuals to end their lives, and receive medical help in doing so, in accordance with their own values. At the same time, society has an obligation to protect individuals from being killed against their will or pressured or coerced to choose death.
Medically assisted dying should be a last resort.
conservatives on this issue, consider abortion to be the killing of an innocent human being and therefore seriously morally wrong.
fertilized,
the only point at which it makes sense to draw a line is at the very beginning of a human life.
