Summary Of Michael Tooley's Arguments Against Euthanasia

Tooley’s main thesis was that in the appropriate situation voluntary active euthanasia nor helping someone commit suicide is morally wrong and that it should be legally permitted. Tooley first defines Euthanasia as where a person is intentionally killed or allowed to die because it is believed that this person would be better off dead. Michael Tooley uses 6 premises that defend his thesis. The first premises is that it is in a person's best interest to die if they are suffering from a incurable and painful illness. He justifies this point by saying that people on their deathbed would rather die than have to endure another moment of pain. The second premise he uses says that if a person thinks that dying is in his best interest then committing suicide

Tooley states that committing suicide will make the world a better place because it will end the emotional stress on families and such. In premise four Tooley says that with conditions of no one else being wrong, making the world worse off, and if it is in the person's best interest then it can not be morally wrong. Tooley uses an example to justify this by taking two future possible outcomes one with a happy ending and one with a sad; and states that no one would be worse off in either situation because the other group wouldn’t exist. The fifth premise Tooley uses is that it could be morally wrong to assist someone commit suicide only if it was wrong for that person to commit suicide or if committing suicide opposed that person's best interest or if assisting the person commit suicide violated a obligation to someone else. Tooley says that how can it be morally wrong for someone to help someone do something that is not morally wrong. Tooley the states that only two possibilities would allow this to be morally wrong are if the person helping belongs to a religious group and suicide is against their