ty which derives precisely from the need of citizens for protection from unjust attack?2. To legalize assistance in suicide is also inconsistent with the same fundamental tenet of a just legal systemThe decriminalization of suicide (and attempted suicide, therefore) makes sense if we contemplate the plight of people having to face criminal proceedings after failed suicide attempts. Decriminalization motivated by the desire to ease the plight of such people does not, however, imply that the law takes a neutral view of the choice to carry out suicide. Those who attempt suicide are clearly moved by the (at least transient) belief that their lives are no longer worthwhile. Since just legal arrangements rest on a belief in the ineliminable worth of every human life, the law must reject the reasonableness of a choice which is so motivated.Hence the law must also refuse to accommodate the behaviour of those who effectively endorse the choice of the suicide: for they too are acting on the view that the person they are helping no longer has a worthwhile life. Their behaviour would not be sufficiently explained if one were to say that they were acting 'out of friendship' or 'out of compassion'. For how could the motives of the person assisting in suicide be described as 'friendship' or 'compassion' if they were not informed by the thought that the person intending to kill himself would be better off dead? If one thought this person could continue to have a worthwhile life it would hardly be an act of friendship, for example, to help him kill himself.So there is reason to resist the legalization of assisted suicide as fundamental as the first reason given for resisting the legalization of euthanasia.3. If voluntary euthanasia is legalized then the most compelling reason for opposing the legalization of non-voluntary euthanasia has been abandonedMany of those who support the legalization of voluntary euthanasia are opposed to the legalization of no...
