EUTHANASIA AND THE LAW 

Moral Conversation Project:  In light of your reading of Kottak’s article, what do you 
think race is?

ANNOUNCEMENT:  1999-2000 TANNER LECTURE ON HUMAN VALUES
			  Helen Vendler, “Whitman on Lincoln: Aspects of Value”
			  Friday, October 29		Rackham Auditorium

			  SYMPOSIUM ON THE TANNER LECTURE
			  Helen Vendler, Kenneth Fuchs, Mark Neely, Vivian Pollack

I. Two different questions:

A. Is euthanasia morally justifiable (in some circumstance)?
B. Should euthanasia be legally permissible (in that circumstance)?
C. A and B are different questions.  It is possible to think the answer to A is no, 
but the answer to B is yes.  Is it possible for the answer to A to be yes, and the 
answer to B to no (for the same circumstance)?

II. To this point, we have been considering moral issues surrounding euthanasia.

A. Active vs. Passive 
B. Voluntary vs. Nonvoluntary vs. Involuntary
C. Self-administered vs. Other-administered

III. Thursday: the issue that is currently under the most discussion: physician-assisted 
suicide.  Today, earlier Supreme Court cases that prepared the way for this 
question.  First a word about the current legal situation concerning physician-
assisted suicide.

A. Last year’s “Proposal B” (defeated):
1. Allow a Michigan resident or certain out-of-state residents of Michigan 
relatives confirmed by one psychiatrist to be mentally competent and two 
physicians to be terminally ill with six months or less to live to obtain a 
lethal dose of medication to end his or her life.
2. Allow physicians, after following required procedures, to prescribe a 
lethal dose of medication to enable a terminally ill patient to end his or her 
life.
B. In July, 1998 Michigan passed a law making physician-assisted suicide a 
felony, punishable by five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

IV. The issues in Quinlan and Cruzan are different, involving the removal of various 
forms of life-support from those in a “chronic persistent vegetative state” with no 
“reasonable possibility” of recovery and whom the Court finds not to have 
expressed their will on whether they should be kept alive in such a condition.

A. Quinlan finds that parents can remove life support under these conditions.  
The relevant grounds.
1. Constitutional right of privacy, which includes an individual’s right to 
refuse medical treatment.
2. This right be asserted on the individual’s behalf “under the peculiar 
circumstances” here present, viz., no “reasonable possibility of return to 
cognitive and sapient life.” 

B. Cruzan is more equivocal.  (Note: Cruzan was not terminally ill and did not 
require a respirator.  To end her life, she would have had to have been 
deprived of nutriment.)  The issues primarily concern the Constitutional 
question of whether a state law that requires a certain procedure (living will) 
in order to remove life support is constitutional or not.  The majority finds that 
it is, although there is a significant dissent.  But the case discusses many 
general issues concerning whether euthanasia should be legally permitted.

1. Although there is a right of privacy or autonomy, for it to apply here we 
need to know the individual’s will.  
a.  Should having some relationship to the individual (e.g., family) give 
one legal title to assert this right on the individual’s behalf?  The Court 
said no.  Reasons?  Slippery slope?
b. What standard of evidence should be required?  The court said there 
needed to be “clear and convincing evidence” of the individual’s will?  
Too strong?
2. Any right of autonomy or privacy must be balanced against other interests, 
including, according to the Court, the state’s interest in life as an intrinsic 
value.
3. Dissenting, Brennan (and Stevens) argued that the state has “no legitimate 
general interest” in life “abstracted from the interest of the person living 
that life.”
4. Stevens argues that the Court equivocates on ‘life’.  The Court takes it that 
a state has an interest in maintaining physical life, whereas what matters is 
the individual’s life.  In this sense Cruzan’s life has already ended.
5. Furthermore, an individual’s interest in her life includes an interest in how 
she will be remembered.

V. Issues for us:

A. Suppose we try to make some distinction between ordinary and extraordinary 
life support in order to maintain that we should be legally required to take 
extraordinary measures.  How to make this distinction?  Quinlan takes the 
position that such a distinction can only be made relative to “the context of a 
possibly curable patient.”  Is that right?  From that it follows that failing to 
feed Nancy Beth Cruzan is not failing to provide her with ordinary life 
support.  

B. What are the moral differences between basing the law on the right of 
autonomy versus the best interests of the individual?

C. Does the state have an interest in life per se outstrips individuals’ interests in 
their own lives?  

D. Is there a genuine slippery slope worry here?