It’s unfortunate that people want to die and they physically can’t kill themselves at that moment, but there is no moral obligation to grant desires that people can’t fulfill themselves. (There is also the autonomy objection, even if the patient has perfect decision making, killing them now derives then if any future decision making).
We do have an obligation to prevent unreasonable deaths, especially if we are the one’s actively killing them as is the case with MAID.
Therefore a system that potentially (or rather inevitably) causes moral bad without any moral good, is not a morally good system and has no benefit to existing.
The reality is that unreasonable deaths will happen, and expanding it (and lowering the thresholds) will increase the percentage of assisted suicides that don’t meet some metric of moral permissibility.
There is also the societal harm objection, if illnesses/conditions are treated by euthanasia, and euthanasia becomes a popular way of death (like it is increasingly so in Canada) the incentive to improve treatment of those conditions is weaker. It does not result in a improving society in the long run if euthanasia is an acceptable option to certain conditions (note, this refers to more than just medical health but also living or social conditions).
It’s unfortunate that people want to die and they physically can’t kill themselves at that moment, but there is no moral obligation to grant desires that people can’t fulfill themselves. (There is also the autonomy objection, even if the patient has perfect decision making, killing them now derives then if any future decision making).
We do have an obligation to prevent unreasonable deaths, especially if we are the one’s actively killing them as is the case with MAID.
Therefore a system that potentially (or rather inevitably) causes moral bad without any moral good, is not a morally good system and has no benefit to existing.
The reality is that unreasonable deaths will happen, and expanding it (and lowering the thresholds) will increase the percentage of assisted suicides that don’t meet some metric of moral permissibility.
There is also the societal harm objection, if illnesses/conditions are treated by euthanasia, and euthanasia becomes a popular way of death (like it is increasingly so in Canada) the incentive to improve treatment of those conditions is weaker. It does not result in a improving society in the long run if euthanasia is an acceptable option to certain conditions (note, this refers to more than just medical health but also living or social conditions).