Abstract
In the debate surrounding the morality and legality of the practices of physician-assisted death and euthanasia, a common logical argument regularly employed against these practices is the “slippery slope argument.” One formulation of this argument claims that acceptance of physician-assisted death will eventually lead down a “slippery slope” into acceptance of active euthanasia, including its voluntary, non-voluntary, and/or involuntary forms, through psychological and social processes that warp a society’s values and moral perspective of a practice over an extended period of time. This formulation is known as the psychological slippery slope argument. This paper analyzes the psychological slippery slope argument as it is applied to the practice of physician-assisted death, and utilizing recent empirical evidence from various nations around the world that practice physician-assisted death and/or euthanasia, the paper argues that (1) employing the psychological slippery slope argument against physician-assisted death is logically fallacious, (2) this kind of slippery slope is unfounded in practice, and thus (3) the psychological slippery slope argument is insufficient on its own to justify continued legal prohibition of physician-assisted death.
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Notes
In practice, especially in the clinical setting, it is best to avoid the language of “passive euthanasia” when referring to withdrawing or withholding life-sustaining treatment, because since these distinctions between PAD and euthanasia, let alone the various subcategories of euthanasia, are not well known and understood, confusions may arise that conflate withdrawing or withholding life-sustaining treatment with more active and controversial forms of active euthanasia.
This is an interesting and important point to highlight, because these types of slippery slope arguments have been utilized by both those fundamentally opposed to PAD and those sympathetic to PAD as a morally licit practice in itself. One’s perspective on the antecedent of the conditional (i.e. “P”) is ultimately irrelevant so long as one perceives the consequent of the conditional (i.e. “Q”) to be immoral, unacceptable, and/or not proper for legalization. For example, Tom might find PAD to be a perfectly moral and acceptable practice in itself, but due to the belief that it will eventually lead to acceptance and legalization of practices that Tom finds immoral and unacceptable (e.g. AE in its various forms), Tom does not believe that PAD should be accepted by society and legalized in order to avoid this potential slippery slope. Thus, as long as the result of the slippery slope is seen as sufficiently immoral, unacceptable, and/or unfit for legalization, the perspective on PAD is ultimately irrelevant, as the main motivating factor is avoiding the result of the slippery slope, not one’s perspective on PAD, which means this type of argumentation is not limited simply to those who already oppose PAD on moral grounds.
There have been recent legal challenges to the legitimacy of California’s End of Life Option Act; however, at the time of writing (June 21, 2018) a California state appeals court has temporarily reinstated the law pending further litigation. For more information, refer to the CBS News article in the references.
It should be noted, though, that this observation of the greater public acceptance of PAD after longer exposure and comfort with the practice is different than the psychological slippery slope argument against PAD. This observation only highlights a greater acceptance of the existing and legal practice of PAD; the psychological slippery slope argument against PAD takes this observation a step farther and claims that this will eventually lead into an acceptance of AE, too, which is a substantially different and stronger claim than the above observation.
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The author would like to acknowledge Dr. Joshua Crites for providing feedback and recommendations to improve the first draft of this manuscript.
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Potter, J. The psychological slippery slope from physician-assisted death to active euthanasia: a paragon of fallacious reasoning. Med Health Care and Philos 22, 239–244 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-018-9864-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-018-9864-8