Callahan's Four Arguments In Favor Of Euthanasia

Euthanasia is the process of purposely ending a life of an individual in order to ease the pain and suffering (Healey, 2013, p. 1). There are three different types of euthanasia, including voluntary, involuntary, and non-voluntary. Voluntary euthanasia is performed with a patient’s formal consent. Involuntary is preformed without a patient’s consent. Non-voluntary is preformed when a patient is unable to give consent. Voluntary euthanasia can be either active or passive. It is described that passive euthanasia is known as letting a patient die and active euthanasia is know as killing a patient. Voluntary active euthanasia is always morally impermissible. Some argue that there is no difference between voluntary active and passive euthanasia.

383). In Daniel Callahan’s article When Self-Determination Runs Amok, he classifies four arguments in favor of euthanasia. His first argument is over self-determination. For euthanasia to happen it takes two people. There has to be a patient that wants to be killed as well as the doctor that will be preforming the killing. Our life is not property and just because a competent or incompetent individual gives another individual permission to kill does not mean it is the morally right thing to do. Callahan states that “I have yet to hear a plausible argument why it should be permissible for us to put this kind of power in the hands of another, whether a doctor or anyone else. The idea that we can waive out right to life, and then give to another the power to take that life, requires a

The three consequences seen all over the world are “the inevitability of some abuse of the law; the difficulty of precisely writing, and then enforcing, the law; and the inherent slipperiness of the moral reasons for legalizing euthanasia in the first place” (Callahan, 1992, p. 384). Abusing the law is inevitable because someone will disagree with it or act oblivious to it and also because the law is not enforced properly in the “criminal justice system” (Callahan, 1992, p. 384). The law of euthanasia is difficult to “write and then enforce” because many of the terms throughout the law we are unable to define (Callahan, 1992, 348). Such as “a requirement that a medical condition be terminal will run aground on the notorious difficulties of know when an illness is actually terminal” (Callahan, 1992, 384). There is no way to assure that all of the individuals will be offered several different alternatives for finding a solution to any disagreements. Different forms of euthanasia are typically kept a secret unless the doctor chooses to acknowledge it. “There are no good moral reasons to limit euthanasia one the principle of taking life for that purpose has been legitimated” (Callahan, 1992, p. 385). Euthanasia preformed on a competent person has the same morality as euthanasia on an incompetent individual. Even if an individual is incompetent and they many not know what they are doing it still