Euthanasia

Medical Aid in Dying (Physician-Assisted Suicide)

A legal framework in select states where a terminally ill, mentally competent adult requests and receives a prescription for life-ending medication from a doctor, which the patient must self-administer.

Active Euthanasia

Taking a direct, intentional action to cause a patient's death (such as giving a lethal injection) to end persistent suffering.

Passive Euthanasia

Withholding or withdrawing life-prolonging medical treatments (such as a ventilator or feeding tube), thereby allowing the patient to die naturally from their underlying condition.

Conventional Doctrine of Euthanasia

The traditional medical and ethical consensus—supported by organizations like the American Medical Association—that passive euthanasia is morally permissible while active euthanasia is strictly forbidden.

The Rachels Equivalence Thesis

The philosophical argument put forward by James Rachels asserting that there is no intrinsic moral difference between killing a patient directly (active) and letting them die (passive), especially since passive euthanasia can sometimes prolong severe suffering.

The Smith and Jones Thought Experiment

A hypothetical scenario used by James Rachels involving the intentional drowning of a child vs. letting a child drown, designed to prove that the bare difference between killing and letting die does not make one action morally better than the other.

Criteria of Personhood

The five psychological benchmarks used to define membership in the moral community

The Problem of Marginal Cases (End of Life)

The ethical dilemma arising when elderly or mentally compromised individuals lose their developed cognitive capacities, questioning whether a strict application of personhood criteria reduces their moral status.

Utilitarian View on Euthanasia

An ethical stance that supports euthanasia by using the Greatest Happiness Principle to calculate whether ending a life will minimize a patient's net physical, emotional, and financial suffering.

Deontological View Against Euthanasia

A strict moral stance derived from the Categorical Imperative, asserting that suicide or killing is intrinsically wrong because it fails to treat human life as an end in itself.

Deontological View For Euthanasia

A nuance within duty-based ethics asserting that a person's rational autonomy gives them an absolute right to self-determination regarding the timing and manner of their own death.

Virtue Ethics View Against Euthanasia

A character-focused approach grounded in teleology, asserting that life has a natural biological end and purpose, making natural death and palliative care preferable to intervention.

Autonomy (Healthcare Principle)

The foundational principle that respects individuals as rational, self-determining beings who must be permitted to make their own healthcare choices free of coercion, duress, or misinformation.

Harm Principle

The justification for restricting an individual's autonomy explicitly to prevent them from causing physical harm to other people.

Weak Paternalism

The restriction of autonomy imposed on a person whose decision-making capacity is already compromised or diminished, specifically to protect them from self-harm.

Strong Paternalism

The restriction of autonomy imposed on a fully functional, competent person entirely to override their choices for their own benefit or well-being.

Legal Moralism

The practice of using the power of the law and legislation to enforce collective moral values and impose behavioral restrictions on everyone for the presumed benefit of society.