PHIL20401 Lecture 17: lecture 17 notes
Document Summary
This question is distinct from the question whether anyone is ever morally entitled to be allowed or helped to die. I therefore believe that someone can be morally entitled to be helped or allowed to die. Thinks that not need establish a law or right to die presence of an explicitly formulated, positive right to euthanasia, a right vested in patients by law or other institutional rules. Establishing a right to die, in this sense, is only one way of removing the barriers to justified euthanasia, and it is a rather extreme way of removing them. Offering someone an alternative to the status quo makes two outcomes possible for him, but neither of them is the outcome that was possible before. He can now choose the status quo or choose the alternative, but he can no longer have the status quo without choosing it.
