The other is whether voluntary euthanasia is ethically defensible.

In most countries this is not the status of euthanasia.

The Individualization of Death and Euthanasia , Holy Synod of the Church of Greece, Committee of Bioethics, Scientific Conference on Euthanasia (Athens, May 17 18, 2002), retrieved on February 27, 2009.

As the Post pointed out, there is no such thing as involuntary euthanasia in the Netherlands.

The Dutch know how voluntary euthanasia is practiced in their country, they know that legal euthanasia has improved, rather than harmed, their medical care, and they want the possibility of assistance in dying, if they should want and need it.

Peggy Battin, the most prominent American bioethicist working on assisted dying and euthanasia, also took the stand.

The most compassionate measure that the US, and Saudi Arabia, should take is a form of political euthanasia.

But it does so at the cost of rendering incoherent its own vigorous opposition to assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia.

Ten percent of all deaths in that country, he recently claimed, are from euthanasia, half of which are forced upon helpless patients.

Despite a change of government in the Netherlands since voluntary euthanasia was legalized, no effort has been made to repeal the measure.

It thus draws a line between the past and the future leading to what John Maynard Keynes called euthanasia of the rentier.

One is whether a person has a right to refuse life sustaining medical treatment. The other is whether voluntary euthanasia is ethically defensible.

(The most recent Dutch report, released after Smith handed down her judgment, confirms that there has been no dramatic increase in euthanasia cases in the Netherlands.)

Critics allege that the legalization of voluntary euthanasia has led to a breakdown of trust in the medical profession and all sorts of other dire consequences.

At the same time, native Europeans must learn to accept that Islam may offer new vantage points on such moral issues as euthanasia, abortion, individuality, and solidarity.

Although Belgium recently followed the Dutch way of regulating voluntary active euthanasia in a strictly medicalized framework, it is precisely this sort of regulation that is increasingly challenged.

Recent developments in the Netherlands have also shown that euthanasia is discussed more in the context of autonomy, control, and rational choice rather than of uncontrollable medical symptoms.

There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.

And the low interest rates needed to maintain full employment would lead in time to the euthanasia of the rentier of those who live off the rents of capital.

The results showed that juries given explicit nullification instructions were more likely to vote guilty in a drunk driving case, but less likely to do so in a euthanasia case.

Ms. Narain (Mauritius), in response to a question put at the previous meeting, noted that no policy decision had been taken in her country on euthanasia, which would be treated as murder with mitigating circumstances.

Physician assisted suicide is thus not classified as euthanasia by the US State of Oregon, where it is legal under the Oregon Death with Dignity Act, and despite its name, it is not legally classified as suicide either.

There are conflicting views about whether legalization of voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands, and of physician assistance in dying in Oregon, has led to an increase in the number of vulnerable people being killed or assisted in dying withouttheirfull, informed consent.

On the No side a disparate coalition drawn from both the far right and the far left, including ultra Catholics and unreconstructed Marxists, has sought to whip up hysteria about supposed threats ranging from military conscription to euthanasia and abortion.

But insights into the changing moral landscape, in which issues like animal rights, abortion, euthanasia, and international aid have come to the fore, have not come from religion, but from careful reflection on humanity and what we consider a life well lived.

It is believed that she was taken to the Bernburg Euthanasia Centre in February 1942, where she was among the 14,000 killed in the course of post war documentation, in 1949 she was pronounced legally dead, with a date of 28 April 1942.

Lastly, some of the Medical Council (Code of Practice) Regulations 2000 set out in the report were problematic because they could open the door to euthanasia, and it would be interesting to know if there were any procedural controls to prevent that from happening.

Bennett s decision was also ethical because, as the reference to the country s money suggests, she was not thinking only of herself. Opponents of legal voluntary euthanasia or physician assisted suicide sometimes say that if the laws were changed, patients would feel pressured to end their lives in order to avoid being a burden to others.