the rights explosion: the right to die...
As individuals and as a society, we have the positive obligation
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
"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 tha
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