The intentional termination of life is a controversial topic in ethics. These discussions include questions about physician-assisted suicide, killing and letting die, murder, suicide in general, and abortion. Let’s think about the first topic: physician-assisted suicide.
Many people believe that passive euthanasia is always morally preferable to active euthanasia. Passive euthanasia occurs when a medical doctor removes life-prolonging equipment that would otherwise keep a patient alive, and the patient dies naturally from a disease, illness, or injury, for example. Active euthanasia involves the killing of a patient through, for example, the administering of a lethal drug to bring about the patient’s death.
The latter is commonly seen as an act of killing because death is caused intentionally, and killing is always wrong. Do you agree or disagree with this moral assessment? That is, is active euthanasia morally wrong? Or are both forms of euthanasia wrong? Or, lastly, are both forms of euthanasia morally permissible in the case of a person with a terminal illness and there is little to no chance that the person will survive? What do you think?
