Abstract This article sets out a descriptive typology of religious perspectives on legalized euthanasia — political advocacy, individual conscience, silence, embedded opposition, and formal public opposition — and then examines the normative basis for these perspectives through the themes of sovereignty, stewardship, and the self. It also explores the public relevance of these religious perspectives for debates over legalized euthanasia, particularly in the realm of public policy. Ironically, the moral discourse of religious traditions on euthanasia may gain public relevance at the expense of its religious content. Nonetheless, religious traditions can provide a context of ultimacy and meaning to this debate, which is a condition for genuine pluralism.
Abstract In a morally fragmented society there is no good reason for ethics committees to assume any particular point of view, yet failure to do so compromises their ability to function in either a case-review or an educational capacity. A casuist methodology might enable committees to fulfill both roles.
Extract Torture probably ended a long time ago in my country, but now we have more sophisticated ways of abusing human rights – in the way we deliver health care. The falsification of morbidity and mortality figures; not paying attention to the so-called ‘Capitalist’ diseases like drug abuse and even AIDS; not talking about the hazards of environmental pollution – all this has prevented us from taking ameliorating and protective measures.
Extract We reaffirm . . . our most categorical rejection of torture. Likewise, we reiterate our resolute support of the diverse initiatives aimed at investigating the participation of doctors in these unacceptable and condemnable practices, and the sanctioning of these activities within the medical profession and scientific organisations. . . There exists irrefutable proof that, during the 16 years of dictatorship, doctors and other members of the health care professions caused brutal suffering to their peers. Doctors involved in acts of torture are, for the most part, members of the armed forces. The conduct of these professionals is the result of the displacement of their medical vocation by the doctrine of ‘national security’, which conceives of the masses and their social and political organisations as the ‘internal enemy’.
(Notes that no doctors in private practice were known to have been involved in torture in Turkey. Those involved were working part-time or full-time for the government, or in the military.) Extract . . . Government pressure, on full or part-time employees, emerges in various forms. Doctors who refuse to participate in the act of torture can be accused of not obeying the orders of their immediate superiors and can be either dismissed from government service, or relocated to other posts with highly unfavourable working/living conditions. Material considerations, fear of being removed from family, and the obvious threat of coming under suspicion of ‘secretly collaborating with public enemies’, etc, exerts such emotional pressure that doctors are forced to participate, directly or indirectly, in the act of torture.
Extract Fulfilling the universal code of medical ethics is the ‘conditio sine qua non’ and we should prevent all attempts to change the basic document of European and world medicine, the Hippocratic Oath. Pross’s paper about the total failure of the German Medical Association to acknowledge and deal with war crimes perpetrated by doctors reinforces the need to adhere to the Hippocratic Oath.
Extract Conclusion When President Bush successfully thwarted passage of the Emergency Chinese Immigration Relief Act of 1989 and implemented his own order insisting upon “careful consideration” of victims who plead for political asylum because of coercive population control measures in their homelands, he unwittingly illustrated the need for a change in the statutory language. The Executive Order unwisely forces the issue of coercive population control policies into statutory language designed to protect victims of discrimination. Such manipulations would not be necessary if the Refugee Act of 1980 were amended to encompass the Handbook’s interpretation of the U.N. Protocol.
The interpretative guidelines to the U.N. Protocol, and derivatively to the Convention, call for a “conscientious objector” exception to military service. The grant of refugee status to individuals who prove “valid reasons of conscience,” even reasons distinct from religious claims, recognizes that fitting an individual within the protections of the refugee definition requires a judgment on the means other nations use to implement their policy ends, not just the ends themselves. Rather than relying solely on the five narrow grounds for granting asylum that were developed in response to the atrocities of World War II, the U.N. Protocol, as interpreted by the Handbook, also advocates protection for the individual persecuted by virtue of mandatory participation in a military service with which he morally disagrees. Because the debate regarding coercive population control considers the legitimacy of means employed in achieving governmental policy objectives, the logic of the conscientious objector exception also applies to claims such as that of Chang.
Extract The case is of interest to doctors, but not because it deals with midwifery and its legality in Canada – the Supreme Court decision is silent on that point. At issue was the status of the human fetus: Is a full-term human fetus that is partially born a person in the eyes of the criminal law? The court decided it is not. . . . The Supreme Court has decided this case on very narrow legal grounds and it has carefully avoided coming to grips with the issue of whether a fetus is a person in the eyes of the law. This is not surprising. On several occasions, such as cases involving Morgentaler5 and Daigle,6 the Supreme Court has made clear that the status of the fetus should not be resolved in court – the court is not prepared to do Parliament’s work.
Extract The question he must answer is, If the fetus is a human being (which indeed he or she is), what should he do? If a woman came in telling him that she was going to kill her 2-day-old baby, would he sit back not wanting to play “godlet”?
Extract Like it or not, physicians are going to be reading a lot about euthanasia in the next few years. . . . Many physicians are more or less comfortable with the idea of withholding or withdrawing “medically useless” treatment. In other words, they accept passive euthanasia. . . . .If the medical profession thinks a physician might become responsible for a patient’s death through inaction, but without automatically bearing moral guilt, why does it insist that a physician who becomes responsible for the death of a patient through action automatically becomes morally guilty? . . . Medical ethics should never be decided by consensus or because of what is politically expedient. . .I am not making a plea for active euthanasia. I am suggesting that Canadian physicians should look at this issue honestly and openly.
