e crime of murder, even if all that an accused had done is to hasten the death of a human being who was due to die in any event'. In spite of this charge, the court simply imposed a nominal sentence; that is, imprisonment until the rising of the court. (Friedman 246) Once any group of human beings is considered unworthy of living, what is to stop our society from extending this cruelty toother groups? If the mongoloid is to be deprived of his right to life, what of the blind and deaf? and What about of the cripple, the retarded, and the senile? Courts and moral philosophers alike have long accepted the proposition that people have a right to refuse medical treatment they find painful or difficult to bear, even if that refusal means certain death. But an appellate court in California has gone one controversial step further. (Walter 176) It ruled that Elizabeth Bouvia, a cerebral palsy victim, had an absolute right to refuse a life-sustaining feeding tube as part of her privacy rights under the US and California constitutions. This was the nation's most sweeping decision in perhaps the most controversial realm of the rights explosion: the right to die... As individuals and as a society, we have the positive obligation to protect life. The second precept is that we have the negative obligation not to destroy or injure human life directly, especially the life of the innocent and invulnerable. It has been reasoned that the protection of innocent life- and therefore, opposition to abortion, murder, suicide, and euthanasia- pertains to the common good of society. Among the potential effects of a legalised practice of euthanasia are the following: "Reduced pressure to improve curative or symptomatic treatment". If euthanasia had been legal 40 years ago, it is quite possible that there would be no hospice movement today. The improvement in terminal care is a direct result of attempts made to minimize suf...
