With this report the Danish Council of Ethics wishes to advise against the legalization of euthanasia. The Council's recommendation is unanimous but is based on a number of different lines of reasoning.
The report is devided into three sections.
Sections 1 is a short definition of the term 'euthanasia'.
Section 2 contains the Council's different arguments against the legalization of euthanasia. Among these are two different forms of criticism of the autonomy-based line of argument in favour of legalizing euthanasia. The first is a criticism of the ideology generally underlying even the demand for self-determination and autonomy. The other focuses on the fact that, in practice, euthanasia is incompatible with actual self-determination for patients. Furthermore, the Council argues that euthanasia is at odds with the inviolability of human life, that euthanasia is incompatible with an ethically defensible patient-doctor relationship, and that euthanasia is the start of a slippery slope.
Section 3 gives the reader the possibility of acquiring greater background knowledge about the debate as a whole, not least about common arguments in favour of euthanasia, which are obviously not amplified in section 2. Members of the Council of Ethics do not necessarily support the individual views and arguments set out in section 3.
Read the report in English
|
