Value+to+Life+Da

Turn—There’s Always Value to Life

A. The notion that absent the Affirmative, ________________ negates all value to human life is morally repugnant. Their reductionist perspective of human worth legitimizes a framework of state sanctioned violence.

B. The quest to decipher the value to human life beyond mere existence opens up a pandora’s box of eugenic murders Richard Coleson, JD Law, Summer, 1997, Issues in Law and Medicine, 13 Issues L. & Med. 3, Lexis

Frustrated with the ethic of "preserving every existence, no matter how worthless," Dr. Alfred Hoche in 1920 wrote, expectantly: "A new age will arrive--operating with a higher morality and with great sacrifice--which will actually give up the requirements of an exaggerated humanism and overvaluation of mere existence." 8 Issues in Law & Med. at 265. Euthanasia proponents of our day, too, seek with great zeal to usher in a new age. They speak, in words echoing from a distant age, that it is cruel to deprive those who are suffering from their desired means to peace and freedom from pain. Like Binding, they scold: "Not granting release by gentle death to the incurable who long for it: this is no longer sympathy, but rather its opposite." Id. at 254. The early promoters of euthanasia appeared to be sincere in their belief in the virtues of merciful death. Today's promoters of physician-assisted suicide may also be sincere, but it is a sincerity born of an unpardonable carelessness. Unlike their predecessors, euthanasia proponents today have the benefit of the lesson of history, which has taught the true nature of physician-assisted killing as a false compassion and a perversion of mercy. History warns that the institution of assisted-death gravely threatens to undermine the foundational ethic of [*30] the medical profession and the paramount principle of the equal dignity and inherent worth of every human person. C. Their argument risks a slippery slope – once we decide that certain lives are not worth living, we jeopardize all ethics and legitimize killing babies for their organs. Welcome to moral nihilism. Lisa Hanger, B.A. at Miami University, Summer, 1992, Journal of Law-Medicine, 5 Health Matrix 347

Considering anencephalic infants "dead" or "close enough to death" instills in the public a fear that other individuals very near death also will be declared dead and will be killed for the sake of procuring their organs. If the UAGA or state statutes are amended to require anencephalic infants to become organ donors, it is believed that other individuals with neural tube anomolies or debilitating cognitive deficiencies also may be forced to become organ donors before their natural deaths. n38 Specifically, the " slippery slope" would lead most directly to those infants born with hydroencephaly n39 and microencephaly n40 as becoming forced organ donors. This position could then extend to other groups of people similarly situated who possess only limited cognitive functioning or who arguably lack a "valid" interest in life, including death row inmates, adults in a permanently vegetative state, individuals with Alzheimer's disease, [*357] or incompetent individuals with terminal illnesses. n41 To declare as dead many of these groups whom the general population perceive to be very much alive could jeopardize the ethical integrity of the medical profession and decrease public trust in medicine. n42 Many individuals also would become even more skeptical of organ donation. While some groups have tried to minimize the fear of a slippery slope by arguing that "safeguards" would prevent groups of individuals other than anencephalic infants from being affected by an amendment to the UDDA, n43 any "safeguard" would not be sufficient. Once "very fine distinctions [are made] regarding the dying," n44 the risk of descending down the slippery slope becomes significant.

D. Consequentialism the best framework to avoid their impacts. Robert E. Goodin, professor of social sciences and philosopher at the Research School of Social Sciences at Australian National University, Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy, 1995, p. 39

The rather more grand way of phrasing the point here might be couched in terms of undermining moral agency. Failure to discharge isolated, individual responsibilities may well result in other people's being harmed. That is wrong, but it is, at least in principle, a remediable wrong. People can, at least in principle, always be compensated for harms to their interests (or so the libertarian would claim, anyway). Failure to discharge shared, collective responsibilities has more grievous consequences, undermining in certain crucial respects other people's moral agency itself. For that, compensation is in principle impossible. There must be a moral agent to be compensated, and it is that very moral agency that is being undermined."