lm of
             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 are
             "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 that the last twenty
             ...