Natural Law Argument Against Euthanasia

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Natural law theory has exerted the most enduring influence on the argument against Euthanasia, but people shall argue that in doing so it has made an unwitting accommodation with utilitarian principles. This is ironic because utilitarianism is pragmatic, calculative and inherently concerned with the short term rather than with the eternal, whereas natural law is committed to a deep metaphysical engagement with the eternal.

A problem with natural law is its anti-democratic bias. Natural law is created in a mono directional manner, from top to bottom. Its principles descend either from god or from some other eternal abstraction. Within This intellectual framework human beings are essentially submissive. Their only legitimate purpose is to discern these laws and then to adapt and modify their own lives so that the eternal principles are expressed in a material form. These ideas have their antecedents in Plato’s theory of forms, where the fundamental reality is to be found in an eternal set of abstractions. Natural law, like the platonic forms, is based on an idealistic …show more content…
The “sanctity of life” doctrine which it is absolutely forbidden either to perform or fail to perform some action with the aim of causing or facilitating the death of any innocent human being oneself or another, whether or not the person to die consents to the act or omission, and whether or not he is better off with a quick and painless death. Hence, euthanasia voluntary or not is forbidden. The taking of innocent human life is God’s prerogative, not men. No human being has the right to “play God.” On the basis of the “sanctity of life” doctrine many religious people oppose the legalization of physician-assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia.
II. “Unnatural” acts are wrong. Though in-vitro fertilization and surrogate birthing are both wrong for this reason, the use of fertility drugs by a couple that has had difficulty in conceiving is
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