Euthanasia means “a good death”, hence “mercy killing”, or “assisted suicide”. The OCR specification requires us to relate these issues to the norms derived from Situation Ethics and Natural Law.

In the last ten years 217 UK citizens have chosen to end their lives by going to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland, where euthanasia is legal.  That represents 22 a year out of a total 550,000 UK deaths.  Three times in recent years Parliament has debated and rejected a change in the 1960 law against assisted suicide.  However, an important change in emphasis has occurred in 2010: the so-called Starmer guidelines on assisted suicide (named after the Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer) has made it much less likely that anyone assisting suicide will be prosecuted, as Lord Falconer said recently “”compassionate assistance to commit suicide is no longer liable for prosecution” (Today programme 25.10.12). The key, says Starmer, is our motive in assisting suicide.

The issues seem to be these:

1. If the law was changed, what model of assisted suicide would we choose?  The House of Lords review claimed that if we adopted the Oregon rules in America, 1200 people a year would choose to end their lives, but if we adopted the Netherlands rules, 30,000 people would so choose.  Would different forms of euthanasia law really make such a difference?

2. Ethically the debate lines up between sanctity of life arguments and quality of life.  Sanctity of life arguments take different forms: biblical Christian arguments, Natural law arguments and Kantian arguments.  The arguments are rather different – but in what ways?  Under quality of lfie, the utiltarians led by Peter Singer have consistently argued for euthanasia.  Should quality of life trump sancity of life?

The Catholic Church view is expressed in the Catechism and papal encyclicals (see Humanae Vitae 1968) or contrast it with this view, from the husband of a sufferer of locked-in syndrome: 

“Monica’s eventual decision to end her life by starvation was taken in a controlled, and to her, rational way, balancing the ordeal she knew she would suffer, the pain she knew it would cause her family against her future prospects of minimal independence and negligible dignity”.

‘Only when the balance tipped to favour the greater pain over a short period against prolonged misery did she exercise her right to take her life.’

3.  Slippery slope arguments are used by opponents of assisted suicide like Lord Alton, or Peter Saunders on Radio 4 (25.10.2012), who said “if we changed the law vulnerable people would be abused”.  Slippery slope is listed as a fallacy or mistake in the form of an argument because it implies that one change will inevitably lead down a sliding slope to disaster.  But this is an empirical argument about probability not a logical fallacy. And is this slope necessarily true?  What checks would we need to stop the slope sliding to a widespread disrespect for human life? And is this a probable outcome anyway?

4. Arguments for choice suggest that people should have the right to choose how to die just as they have the right to choose how to live.  Proponents reject the view of the hospice movement that no-one has to have a bad death: Tony Nicklinson, for example, went to court in 2012 to argue that his life with “locked-in syndrome” was a living hell. Click here for a video of his response, or read Dr Kailash Chand’s support of Nicklinson here.  When Monica Cooke heard that the court rejected the argument again, she starved herself to death.  The right to choose was Diane Pretty’s argument to the European Court in 2001. She claimed Article 1, the right to life, included the right to take your own life.  The judges rejected this argument.  Click here to re-enact a simulation of that famous court case.

Because this is a complex issue, I have posted a number of powerpoints.

Julie Arliss gives us a thorough overview of the issues in her powerpoint.

There is a powerpoint by me on the Starmer guidelines.

And Lawrence Hinman gives his views in a detailed consideration.