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Euthanasia Often Surfaces In Mainstream News As Being A

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Euthanasia often surfaces in mainstream news as being a highly controversial issue, with strong arguments for both positions. To be clear, euthanasia can be defined as the following, “Intentionally taking the life of a presumably hopeless person” (Gay-Williams, 781). There are also several other distinctions that classify euthanasia as either active or passive, based on the level of action involved, or as voluntary, involuntary, or non-voluntary, based on the level of consent (Dittmer). However, in this paper, when I use the term euthanasia, I am speaking of euthanasia in any of its forms. Thus, I will argue that all forms of euthanasia are morally impermissible. Lastly, I will assess an objection to my argument, but in the end show that …show more content…

The second premise is true, because given the definition of euthanasia, no one is being saved by the act, but only the opposite, someone is being killed. For an action to be considered euthanasia, three conditions must be met: there must be the taking of a life, the person whose life is taken must be suffering from a disease with a terminal prognosis, and the action must be intentional (Gay-Williams, 781). Accordingly, it is evident that there is no aspect of self-defense in this case, and no one’s life is being saved in the process of euthanasia. Therefore, it is true that euthanasia is an action that involves the taking of someone’s life, without the saving of another’s life.
Therefore, given the preceding reasons for the truth of the premises, and the valid argument form, modus ponens, the argument against euthanasia is sound. In defense of the premises, I utilized the moral theory of natural law. For this theory, an action is judged to be moral or immoral based on it being in accord with the natural law or not. This natural law is built into our very nature as human beings, so an action is moral if it is consistent with our nature. I used this moral theory to show that the desire to survive is a part of our natural law, and thus euthanasia is against our natural law as human beings.
One might object to my argument by way of utilitarian reasoning. In

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