y subdue the doctor to assisting a patient who is not “ready to die”. The type of respect and trust that medical practitioners hold over their patients contains too much room for abuses and mistakes on their behalf to go ahead with an assisted suicide. The “Respect for Human Life” can also be inferred to mean “sancticity of life”. Life will become so devalued that people will focus their attention on death. There would no point at all to life and no reason for us to be here. From a utilitarian point of view, physician assisted suicide can appear to be morally justified in all cases. The death of the patient would not only ease their suffering but the suffering of the family too. It would also eliminate the financial burden and could put that money to work in other advancements in medicine. A rule-utilitarian would produce the most good according to “individual acts [which] are right, then, when they conform to the moral code that would produce more overall good than would alternative moral codes”. Additionally, the focus is drawn to the nature of the consequences of the action not necessarily the individuals’ action. This easier to put under a generic rule since the focus is on the outcome, not what the action is. Even though assisting a suicide may seem like it is producing the most good for the individual involved, it could lead down the “slippery slope” to even greater misery in the future. “Utilitarians leave some room for rights, but ultimately they reduce rights to utility.” A rights ethicist would argue that the rights of the person outweigh the consequences of the action. First, we must address our basic human rights, which are right to life, property, and the pursuit of happiness. If a physician intervenes and offers the means to destroy another life, that is clearly violating a human life. On the other hand, one could question th...
