Euthanasia

EUTHANASIA IN FAVOUR:

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
* Dying is one of the most important events in human life
* Dying can be good or bad
* People have the right to try and make the events in their lives as good as possible
* So they have the right to try to make their dying as good as possible
* If the dying process is unpleasant, people should have the rightto shorten it, and thus reduce the unpleasantness
* People also have obligations - to their friends and family, to their doctors and nurses, to society in general
* These obligations limit their rights
* These obligations do not outweigh a person's right to refuse medical treatment that they do not want
* But they do prevent a patient having any right to be killed* 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.
The right not to be killed
The right to life gives a person the right not to be killed if they don't want to be.
Those in favour of euthanasia will argue that respect for this right not to be killed is sufficient to protect againstmisuse of euthanasia, as any doctor who kills a patient who doesn't want to die has violated that person's rights.
Opponents of euthanasia may disagree, and argue that allowing euthanasia will greatly increase the risk of people who want to live being killed. The danger of violating the right to life is so great that we should ban euthanasia even if it means violating the right to die.
The rights toprivacy and freedom of belief include a right to die
This is the idea that the rights to privacy and freedom of belief give a person the right to decide how and when to die.
The European Convention on Human Rights gives a person the right to die
* Not according to Britain's highest court.
* It concluded that the right to life did not give any right to self-determination over life anddeath, since the provisions of the convention were aimed at protecting and preserving life.
English law already acknowledges that people have the right to die
This argument is based on the fact that the Suicide Act (1961) made it legal for people to take their own lives.
Opponents of euthanasia may disagree:
* The Suicide Act doesn't necessarily acknowledge a right to die;
* it couldsimply acknowledge that you can't punish someone for succeeding at suicide
* and that it's inappropriate to punish someone so distressed that they want to take their own life.
Euthanasia opponents further point out that there is a moral difference between decriminalising something, often for practical reasons like those mentioned above, and encouraging it.
They can quite reasonably argue that thepurpose of the Suicide Act is not to allow euthanasia, and support this argument by pointing out that the Act makes it a crime to help someone commit suicide. This is true, but that provision is really there to make it impossible to escape a murder charge by dressing the crime up as an assisted suicide.
Medical resources
Euthanasia may be necessary for the fair distribution of health resourcesThis argument has not been put forward publicly or seriously by any government or health authority. It is included here for completeness.
In most countries there is a shortage of health resources.
As a result, some people who are ill and could be cured are not able to get speedy access to the facilities they need for treatment.
At the same time health resources are being used on people who...