Euthanasia Essay Research Paper A law permitting

Euthanasia Essay, Research Paper

A law permitting euthanasia, which was passed by the Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory of Australia in 1995 (and which came into force in July last year) was overturned last month by a law passed by the Australian Federal Parliament. The ‘Andrews Bill’ had been passed by a large majority in the House of Representatives, but the result in the Senate remained uncertain up to the day of voting. In the event it was passed by 38 to 33 votes. The Linacre Centre was gratified to learn that several Senators said they had been influenced to change their minds and oppose the legalization of euthanasia by a talk given in 1995 by Luke Gormally at the John Plunkett Centre in Sydney, which the Centre subsequently published and distributed widely. The article below is an edited version of a Submission made last year by Luke Gormally to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Legislation Committee, which reported on the issue of legalization prior to the Senate vote.

Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide: Seven Reasons Why They Should Not Be Legalized

Luke Gormally [1997]

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 uncoerced 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 uncoerced, if he thought the patient had prospects of a worthwhile life. A request to be killed appears to be a ground for euthanasiast 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 euthanasiast killing are judgements 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 recognised 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, ineliminable features of our humanity.

Euthanasiast 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 system for which belief in the worth and dignity of every human being is foundational.

It is of critical importance to every state to maintain a body of laws consistent with respect for the dignity and worth of every human being. In particular, it is important not to legalize killing of the innocent. For it is the fundamental task of civil authority to protect the innocent. But if the claim that a person lacks a worthwhile life is held to make killing lawful, then the state has ceased to recognise the innocent as having binding claims to protection. If the state treats these claims as null, then what claim has it to that authority which derives precisely from the need of citizens for protection from unjust attack.

2. To legalize assistance in suicide is also inconsistent with the same fundamental tenet of a just legal system

The decriminalization of suicide (and attempted suicide, therefore) makes sense if we contemplate the plight of people having to face criminal proceedings after failed suicide attempts. Decriminalization motivated by the desire to ease the plight of such people does not, however, imply that the law takes a neutral view of the choice to carry out suicide. Those who attempt suicide are clearly moved by the (at least transient) belief that their lives are no longer worthwhile. Since just legal arrangements rest on a belief in the ineliminable worth of every human life, the law must reject the reasonableness of a choice which is so motivated.

Hence the law must also refuse to accommodate the behaviour of those who effectively endorse the choice of the suicide: for they too are acting on the view that the person they are helping no longer has a worthwhile life. Their behaviour would not be sufficiently explained if one were to say that they were acting ‘out of friendship’ or ‘out of compassion’. For how could the motives of the person assisting in suicide be described as ‘friendship’ or ‘compassion’ if they were not informed by the thought that the person intending to kill himself woul