To legalize euthanasia would only mean a legalization of a doctor to murder a man. It will affirm that not all forms of murder are evil. Rev Dr. Peter Mullen, a priest for the Church of England, articulates his case:
The debate about euthanasia is being obscured by the use of pernicious euphemisms. Let’s come clean and speak plainly. “The doctor’s right to end a life” means the doctor has the right to kill someone. Whichever way you look at this, it means a licence to murder. Those who campaign for euthanasia want a change in the law so that this sort of killing – for that’s what it is – should no longer be against the law. This has far-reaching consequences, for it means that, in some cases, murder will no longer be murder.
I have asked for euthanasia campaigners to come clean and not hide behind obscuring euphemisms. So let me come clean myself. As a Christian, I do not believe we have the right to die at the moment and by the means of our own choosing. Suicide is a mortal sin. Along with Ivan Karamazov, none of us has the right to “return his ticket.” I believe that as an absolute principle, but of course I accept the fact that others do not agree. So, instead of basing the argument on an absolute deontological principle, let us consider utilitarian arguments instead.
Once we start to do this, we soon see that the good – if it is a good – of allowing someone to recruit a doctor to help him take his own life has to be balanced against consequences which may not be good at all: in fact may turn out to be downright evil. First to be considered is the effect on the morals, the conscience and the psychology of the doctor who has allowed himself to conspire in the killing of another human being.
But there are even wider issues. Definitions and strict limits are notoriously impossible to achieve. Every case of assisted killing will be different from every other case. How, for example, in the case of a very sick person, do we assess the balance of his mind: is he capable of being certain that he wishes to end it? And who is to vouch for that certainty. And it could even be that someone one day expresses the wish to die but that, days or weeks later, he changes his mind. Of course, if he is dead that possibility is no longer open to him.
And then it is well-known that human beings are not perfect. Might some relatives of a very sick man try to persuade him to do away with himself – perhaps even to inherit his money? These are terrible thoughts. But they are so because they are terrible possibilities.
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Posted by Theodore Shoebat
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