Word: euthanasias
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...same time, McCall has infuriated fellow Republicans by openly feuding with party leaders, notably Ronald Reagan, endorsing euthanasia, stressing environmental protection over economic growth, making other highly unconventional pronouncements and failing to support some of his party's candidates for office. This year, barred by law from seeking a third term, McCall refused to endorse his party's conservative gubernatorial candidate and was not at all distressed when Oregonians elected Democrat Bob Straub...
...signers is Catholic Theologian Daniel C. Maguire of Marquette University, author of the recent book Death by Choice. In an accompanying essay, Maguire points out that in spite of the widespread notion that Catholics are totally opposed to active euthanasia, or what he plainly calls mercy killing, he is not the only Catholic theologian who believes it may be justified in some cases...
Against such swift developments in the growing euthanasia campaign, there is also the beginning of a countermovement. In fact, one of the men who first spoke out against excessive medical care for the dying, Princeton Ethicist Paul Ramsey, is now worried because so many people have taken up the cause...
Writing in the current issue of the Hastings Center Studies, Ramsey argues that the idea of death with dignity is now being too readily promoted and death itself too easily accepted. To suggest, as many proponents of euthanasia are doing, that death is an occurrence as natural as birth smacks of "whistling before the darkness descends" and denotes a "very feeble philosophy." It is "soap-opera stuff' to say that "death can be beautiful." Indeed, says Ramsey, death is "the ultimate indignity...
...Kass, like Ramsey, is worried about euthanasia sloganeering that might mask "our prejudices against the old and 'useless' and, in some cases, our simply crass and selfish interests." Like Ramsey, he questions the slogan's implication that "dignity will reign if only we can push back officious doctors, machinery and hospital administrators." Indeed, reflects Kass, "a death with dignity may turn out to be something rare and uncommon, like a life with dignity...