Assisted Dying in Unjust Conditions

The phenomenon of euthanasia and/or assisted suicide (EAS) in unjust conditions has received much attention in the popular press, along with a handful of responses in academic venues. These responses typically defend the permissibility of EAS in unjust conditions by appeal to anti-discrimination or harm reduction arguments, which frame the issue in terms of exclusion from current EAS law. We first briefly examine these arguments within such a framing, and then argue that it fails to account for the deep moral concern elicited by EAS in unjust conditions. To address this moral concern more fully, we compare the policy of allowing EAS in unjust conditions to a hypothetical EAS policy which requires a guarantee of basic care-and thus avoids the EAS cases of moral concern from the start. We argue for the moral superiority of the latter policy and respond to several potential objections.