Abstract

The standard argument in favor of the practice of voluntary physician-assisted death, by means of assisted suicide or active euthanasia, rests on liberal, individualistic grounds. It appeals to two moral considerations: (1) personal self-determination—the right to choose the circumstances and timing of death with medical assistance; and (2) individual well-being—relief of intolerable suffering in the face of terminal or incurable, severely debilitating illness. One of the strongest challenges to this argument has been advanced by Daniel Callahan. Callahan has vigorously attacked the practice of physician-assisted death and the goal of legalization as deep affronts to values of community: “By assuming that the relief of suffering is a goal important enough to legitimate killing as a way of achieving it, we corrupt the idea of such relief as a social goal and duty. We cease helping to bear one another's suffering, but eliminate altogether the person who suffers. We thereby jeopardize both the future of self-determination and the kind of community that furthers its members' capacity to bear one another's suffering. Why bear what can be eliminated altogether?” In another passage Callahan remarks, “For there is a deep sense in which suicide and euthanasia are likely to represent, at least in part, a failure of the community, whether that of the intimate community of family and friends, or the larger civic community, to respond to the needs of another.”