Friends I need some help. I am trying to help one of my friend to develop some arguments against Peter Singer’ argument supporting voluntary euthanasia. Here I quote Singer’s arguments:
Why do we consider killing an innocent person to be wrong?
The answer is twofold.
First, killing someone is a violation of their autonomy. But in the case of voluntary euthanasia, a person’s autonomy is not taken away but supported.
Second, killing an innocent person deprives them of the good things in life they would have otherwise experienced. At this juncture, Singer makes an important qualification. He is not an “absolutist” about autonomy. If a healthy young person is lovesick or depressed, they may temporarily feel that life is not worth living. However, there is much reason to suspect these feelings will pass.
Any arguments to refute it?
From the Summa Theologica of St Thomas Aquinas, Part II-II, Q. 64, art. 5 ‘Whether it is lawful to kill oneself?’
Objection 1. It would seem lawful for a man to kill himself. For murder is a sin in so far as it is contrary to justice. But no man can do an injustice to himself, as is proved in Ethic. v, 11. Therefore no man sins by killing himself.
Objection 3. Further, it is lawful for a man to suffer spontaneously a lesser danger that he may avoid a greater: thus it is lawful for a man to cut off a decayed limb even from himself, that he may save his whole body. Now sometimes a man, by killing himself, avoids a greater evil, for example an unhappy life, or the shame of sin. Therefore a man may kill himself.
On the contrary, Augustine says (De Civ. Dei i, 20): “Hence it follows that the words ‘Thou shalt not kill’ refer to the killing of a man–not another man; therefore, not even thyself. For he who kills himself, kills nothing else than a man.”
I answer that, It is altogether unlawful to kill oneself, for three reasons. First, because everything naturally loves itself, the result being that everything naturally keeps itself in being, and resists corruptions so far as it can. Wherefore suicide is contrary to the inclination of nature, and to charity whereby every man should love himself. Hence suicide is always a mortal sin, as being contrary to the natural law and to charity.
Secondly, because every part, as such, belongs to the whole. Now every man is part of the community, and so, as such, he belongs to the community. Hence by killing himself he injures the community, as the Philosopher declares (Ethic. v, 11).
Thirdly, because life is God’s gift to man, and is subject to His power, Who kills and makes to live. Hence whoever takes his own life, sins against God, even as he who kills another’s slave, sins against that slave’s master, and as he who usurps to himself judgment of a matter not entrusted to him. For it belongs to God alone to pronounce sentence of death and life, according to Deuteronomy 32:39, “I will kill and I will make to live.”
Reply to Objection 1. Murder is a sin, not only because it is contrary to justice, but also because it is opposed to charity which a man should have towards himself: in this respect suicide is a sin in relation to oneself. On relation to the community and to God, it is sinful, by reason also of its opposition to justice.
Reply to Objection 3. Man is made master of himself through his free-will: wherefore he can lawfully dispose of himself as to those matters which pertain to this life which is ruled by man’s free-will. But the passage from this life to another and happier one is subject not to man’s free-will but to the power of God. Hence it is not lawful for man to take his own life that he may pass to a happier life, nor that he may escape any unhappiness whatsoever of the present life, because the ultimate and most fearsome evil of this life is death, as the Philosopher states (Ethic. iii, 6). Therefore to bring death upon oneself in order to escape the other afflictions of this life, is to adopt a greater evil in order to avoid a lesser…
Why the tears? Especially for the baptized children under the age of reason, whose original sin was washed away by baptism, and they were not in the position to collect their own little sins. Somehow the parents do not rejoice… one wonders why?
Incisive and decisive! Life is such a precious gift that any attempt to make it an entirely personal matter is totally unjustified. We can sympathise with those who want to die as swiftly and painlessly as possible but that doesn’t mean we should encourage or assist them. We are not isolated individuals but members of a community who are deeply affected by suicide of any description. We have a moral obligation to do everything we can to prevent it becoming a routine event like having an abortion which is widely accepted as a woman’s right even if it is just for the sake of convenience. When life becomes cheap there is no limit to the excuses that will be found for “mercy-killing”. As it already occurs before children are born there is good reason to believe it will be extended to anyone considered incapable of normal development in later life. Why should the right to life depend on the fact of birth? Does it make any significant difference to the sanctity of life? Or is the right to life simply a human convention with no rational foundation?