Euthanasia

24 Pages 6081 Words

n to protect life. The second precept is that we have the negative obligation not to destroy or injure human life directly, especially the life of the innocent and invulnerable. It has been reasoned that the protection of innocent life- and therefore, opposition to abortion, murder, suicide, and euthanasia- pertains to the common good of society. Among the potential effects of a legalised practice of euthanasia are the following: "Reduced pressure to improve curative or symptomatic treatment". If euthanasia had been legal 40 years ago, it is quite possible that there would be no hospice movement today. The improvement in terminal care is a direct result of attempts made to minimize suffering. If that suffering had been extinguished by extinguishing the patients who bore it, then we may never have known the advances in the control of pain, nausea, breathlessness, and other terminal symptoms that the last twenty years have seen. Some diseases that were terminal a few decades ago are now routinely cured by newly developed treatments. Earlier accep...