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09 May 2019 / Charles Foster
Categories: Features , Human rights
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Euthanasia, Ethics & Public Policy: An argument against legislation (Second Edition)

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“A meticulous, highly readable, and profoundly disturbing examination of the merits of the slippery slope arguments”
  • Author: John Keown
  • Publisher: Cambridge University Press
  • ISBN: 9781107337909
  • Pages: 558
  • RRP: £31.99

Debates about ‘assisted dying’ (AD) (a sloppy, pejorative, but ubiquitous euphemism) always have two phases. First, there are the arguments of principle. The proponents of AD used to major on pain and suffering. It is immoral, they said, not to allow suffering to be terminated, even if that means death. One wouldn’t withhold such a mercy from your dog: why would you withhold it from your grandmother? With advances in palliative care, the rhetoric has changed, and the emphasis is now on autonomy: it’s my life: why shouldn’t I be able to end it when and in the circumstances I choose? Their opponents respond that intentional killing is always wrong, and that any derogation from that principle will be widely, deeply, and damagingly repercussive.

Then come arguments about the practicability of restricting AD to

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