Word: painlessness
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Mercy killing is illegal in most countries: in a recent trial in the Netherlands, for example, a famous physician was found guilty in the mercy killing of her terminally ill mother. This, however, brought forward a large number of doctors who admitted that they had induced painless death in patients who preferred to die rather than to continue suffering. Although most doctors in the United States say they will not perform actual mercy killings under any circumstances, some favor such a practice if the patient, family and attending physicians conclude that it is the most "humane" solution...
...make these points consider the arguments against a system for punishing the innocent when this would maximize the sum of advantages, or for sneaking up on and killing lingering, seriously ill people in a painless way which they did not expect, thus sparing them even the pains of anticipation. The arguments against these have to do with the notion that it would violate the rights of those individuals. It violates their rights because they are rational beings who are capable of forming judgments about right and wrong actions. Consequently it would be necessary either to deceive them about our general...
...judgment excludes this policy. However, it would not exclude it in respect to a brute animal, since the brute animal is capable of suffering but not of forming judgments about moral rightness and wrongness. The need and indeed possibility of putting forward arguments and explaining our policy of painless killing does not arise, and therefore whatever rights a brute animal has are not implicated in this way. It does seem, however, that a brute animal does have rights to be spared suffering, and that these rights are its claim and not just the claim of the abstract ideal of minimizing...
...recognition of the possibility of suffering does not give the fetus as many rights as some opponents of abortion, and as our perhaps intuitive distaste for abortions of convenience seem to require. It may be that fetuses, after all, do not suffer, or that abortions can be made painless for them...
...forward more to provoke public outcry than as a concrete proposal. At the same time, it understandably put a wistful thought into the minds of the moderate Tory establishment: Wouldn't it be nice if the Monday Club could somehow be disposed of with equally quick and painless dispatch? The club, however, shows no signs of going away. As a party within a party and a kind of Loyal Opposition of the right, it represents a genuine strain of conservative opinion, with the active support, nationwide, of at least 7,000 zealots...