Natural Law Theory: Passive Vs. Active Euthanasia

Passive vs. Active Euthanasia
Natural Law Theory states that an action is only considered “right” if it does not intentionally or directly violate any of the four basic intrinsic goods that thirteenth-century philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas described. According to Aquinas, the four basic intrinsic goods are: human life, human procreation, human knowledge and human sociability. So for example, according to natural law theory, using contraceptives such as condoms or birth control pills would not be morally permissible because it directly and intentionally violates the second intrinsic good: human procreation. Not all situations, however, are as straightforward as right or wrong. In some situations, it is impossible to take an action without violating …show more content…
If it is, we move on to the next condition which is necessity. If there is no possible way to avoid the bad effects that will come to pass, then this condition is met as well. The third condition is nonintentionality. To meet this condition, the bad effect must be unintentional. This brings us to the final condition which is proportionality. This condition maintains that the bad effect must be proportional to the good effect. An example of a situation in which the doctrine of double effect would be consulted is if a pregnant woman needed to have a hysterectomy in order to live. A hysterectomy would kill the fetus, but save the woman’s life. According to the doctrine of double effect, a hysterectomy would be morally permissible because it satisfies all of the four conditions. Apart from its effects, the action is permissible because it saves the woman’s life, so the first condition is met. There is no possible way to avoid killing the fetus without saving her life, so the second condition is met. The doctors aren’t intentionally killing the child they are trying to save the woman’s life, so the third condition is met. And finally, destroying the fetus’ life is proportional to saving the woman’s life, …show more content…
With that being said, there are two main types of euthanasia called active euthanasia and passive euthanasia. Active euthanasia describes actively attempting to end a patient’s life by means of drugs or a lethal injection. Passive euthanasia is defined as removing or withholding a medicine or treatment that could have prolonged the patient’s life. Recently, there has been much debate on whether or not passive euthanasia is as morally wrong as active euthanasia. Some claim that passive euthanasia is not a direct violation of the basic good of human life, therefore it is morally permissible. They declare active euthanasia, on the other hand, is a direct violation, and therefore is not morally permissible. I will concede that this statement is technically true in a few rare situations, but in the majority of passive euthanasia cases, the patient is being taken off life support because he is tired of living and simply wants to die. And if that is the case, who’s to tell some terminally ill patient that he’s just going to have to live out his remaining days off treatment in pain and without hope. If a terminal patient wants to die, he should be accommodated not simply ignored. If some patients would like to refuse treatment, and live out the rest of their days naturally, that’s their decision too. It’s the patient’s life. Doctors should act on the requests of their patients, not what