Should laws permit active euthanasia?

Pro: Euthanasia is completely unjustified for the person who suffers only minor discomforts. But some pain is excruciating, unrelenting and intolerable. Some excruciating pain can be endured if only temporarily, and some persistent, severe pain can be endured by those with very strong wills. But a life completely consumed by excruciating pain is not a life worth living. To qualify for euthanasia, the person must have a pain that is extremely severe, very long-lasting and unendurable. Ending the life of an individual who is incurably ill and wants to die, who is suffering excruciating and intolerable pain which does not enable that person to achieve any greater good, is an act of mercy.

Pro: Euthanasia is unjustified if it would go against the wishes of the person. But when a person whose illness or malady is incurable or the physical or mental deterioration is irreversible, and the person wants to die, others are cruel to deny relief to the sufferer.

Pro: The suffering a person experiences may not produce a greater good for that person (for example, religious salvation). The greater good for society (for example, the knowledge gained for medical science) does not suffice to deny a person euthanasia.

Con: Euthanasia is unjustified if the sufferer believes that it is wrong or believes that continuing to live is a duty. To some who are religious, 'carrying a cross' is a way to cleanse the soul.

Pro: Euthanasia preserves human dignity.

Con: Enduring the suffering involved with dying affords a psychological triumph.

Pro: Euthanasia relieves the burden on an individual whose quality of life has deteriorated irrevocably.

Pro: Those who are a burden on society, those who are unable or unwilling adequately to care for and support themselves, have a duty to die.

Reply: When a society terminates the lives of those citizens it considers as having a poor quality of life or as being a burden to the society, the people put to death may come to include the poor, the weak, or those with unpopular political or religious views. For all of these may be regarded in one view or another as leading lives of poor quality or lives that are somehow burdensome to society at large.

When either of these two factors—an individual's quality of life or contribution to society—is incorporated in the discussion of the advisability of euthanasia, the discussion quickly becomes complicated and murky. For these factors can be defined in a variety of contrasting and contradictory ways.

The concept of the 'quality of life' may have several components—freedom from pain and suffering, for example, or wealth or freedom from want, happiness, and warm emotional ties to friends and relatives. Or the concept may omit some of these or reject them all, as when pain and suffering, poverty, and emotional upsets are viewed as challenges to the human spirit and opportunities for self-purification and thus ways to make us more worthy to stand in the presence of our God. Then the decision to end physical suffering by ending a life is regarded as cowardly.

The concept of a person's contribution to society is likewise susceptible to various interpretations. In a materialistic view, productivity or economic value could be taken as paramount among the reasons for keeping particular citizens alive or assisting them in passing on. In the absence of some easily specified and quantified definition of 'contribution to society', the life of an individual could be jeopardized not only by those holding the power to employ euthanasia but also by those who might only express opinions in the matter.

The chief dangers lie in defining the factors 'quality of life' and 'contribution to society' at all.

Con: We do not have the right to end human life.

Con: The suffering person may not be able to give real consent to euthanasia.

Pro: The will of the person who calls for euthanasia for himself or herself is of paramount importance. In cases where individuals freely decide to accept euthanasia for themselves, their choices ought to be carried out.

Con: Keeping euthanasia illegal will ensure that the practice will remain surreptitious and will more likely be performed only on highly motivated individuals.

Con: The practice of euthanasia may lead to the loss of respect for human life in general.

Con: The very existence of the machinery, the necessary organization and expertise, to administer euthanasia would create incentives for choosing the practice, would pressure some dying people to choose accelerated death. The seriously ill would more often consider euthanasia as a way of minimizing the hardship incurred by family and friends, a way to reduce the emotional and financial strain that results from caring for gravely ill people. Uninsured people who cannot afford to pay for medical treatment may be given little choice but to accept euthanasia.