The countries where euthanasia is legal See all pages. Would you like to receive The WeekDay newsletter? If you wish to object to the use of your data in this way, please tick here. Log in. The pros and cons of legalised assisted dying - currently reading. The countries where euthanasia is legal. Will Cop26 negotiators get a last-minute deal over the line? A former cop calls it 'the number one threat to society'.
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French authorities investigate alleged rape of soldier at Elysee Palace. Grampians Peaks Trail opens as hikers question its steep price tag. Taylor Swift's heartbreak anthem has been re-recorded with revealing extra lyrics. Voluntary euthanasia , also known as assisted death , is a medical process which is similar to but distinct from the question should suicide be legal? In euthanasia, a person facing terminal illness has life-prolonging treatment denied and some actions by medical practitioners can active kill the patient.
Does this represent a violation of doctors' commitment to do no harm or is it actually an example of it? Euthanasia is the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering. The justification for this rule is hard to find - many people think it's just an obvious truth philosophers call such truths self-evident. You find variations of this idea in many faiths; for example "do unto others as you would have them do unto you".
A rule is universalisable if it can consistently be willed as a law that everyone ought to obey. The only rules which are morally good are those which can be universalised.
The person in favour of euthanasia argues that giving everybody the right to have a good death through euthanasia is acceptable as a universal principle, and that euthanasia is therefore morally acceptable. If a person wants to be allowed to commit euthanasia, it would clearly be inconsistent for them to say that they didn't think it should be allowed for other people. But the principle of universalisability doesn't actually provide any positive justification for anything - genuine moral rules must be universalisable, but universalisability is not enough to say that a rule is a satisfactory moral rule.
Universalisability is therefore only a necessary condition, not a sufficient condition for a rule to be a morally good rule. So, other than showing that one pre-condition is met, universalisibility doesn't advance the case for euthanasia at all.
Every case is different in some respect, so anyone who is inclined to argue about it can argue about whether the particular differences are sufficent to make this case an exception to the rule.
Oddly enough, the law of universalisability allows for there to be exceptions - as long as the exceptions are themselves universalisable. So you could have a universal rule allowing voluntary euthanasia and universalise an exception for people who were less than 18 years old. But it is one that is used a lot in discussion, and particularly in politics or round the table in the pub or the canteen.
People say things like "we can't control drugs so we'd better legalise them", or "if we don't make abortion legal so that people can have it done in hospital, people will die from backstreet abortions". What lies behind it is Utilitarianism : the belief that moral rules should be designed to produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people.
If you accept this as the basis for your ethical code and it's the basis of many people's ethics , then the arguments above are perfectly sensible. If you don't accept this principle, but believe that certain things are wrong regardless of what effect they have on total human happiness, then you will probably regard this argument as cynical and wrong.
From a utilitarian viewpoint, justifying euthanasia is a question of showing that allowing people to have a good death, at a time of their own choosing, will make them happier than the pain from their illness, the loss of dignity and the distress of anticipating a slow, painful death.
Someone who wants euthanasia will have already made this comparison for themselves. But utilitarianism deals with the total human happiness, not just that of the patient, so that even euthanasia opponents who agree with utilitarianism in principle can claim that the negative effects on those around the patient - family, friends and medical staff - would outweigh the benefit to the patient.
It is hard to measure happiness objectively, but one way to test this argument would be to speak to the families and carers of people who had committed assisted suicide. Opponents can also argue that the net effect on the whole of society will be a decrease in happiness. The only way to approach this would be to look at countries where euthanasia is legal.
However, as no two countries are alike, it seems impossible to extricate the happiness or unhappiness resulting from legal assisted suicide, from any happiness or unhappiness from other sources.
Even if you agree with the utilitarian argument, you then have to deal with the arguments that suggest that euthanasia can't be properly regulated. If we put aside the idea that death is always a bad thing, we are able to consider whether death may actually sometimes be a good thing.
This makes it much easier to consider the issue of euthanasia from the viewpoint of someone who wants euthanasia. The first two reasons form key points in the arguments against euthanasia , but only if you accept that they are true. The last two reasons why death is a bad thing are not absolute; if a person wants to die, then neither of those reasons can be used to say that they would be wrong to undergo euthanasia. People are usually eager to avoid death because they value being alive, because they have many things they wish to do, and experiences they wish to have.
Obviously, this is not the case with a patient who wishes to die - and proper regulation will weed out people who do not really want to die , but are asking for other reasons.
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