Goodbye, Thomas

This chapter, following the format of Thomas Aquinas’s repudiation of suicide inSumma Theologiae, reviews the three central arguments against physician-assisted suicide: (1) suicide is killing and thus violates universal human moral standards against killing; (2) if physician-assisted suicide becomes legal, it could corrupt physicians’ integrity; and (3) the risk of abuse. It responds to each argument, claiming that none is strong enough to defeat the central case for legalization, tacit recognition, and social acceptance of physician aid in dying. It then offers two basic grounds for holding that physician aid-in-dying is morally permissible: (1) the basic principle of liberty, also called freedom or self-determination (limited by the harm principle), a central principle of a free society; and (2) the right to avoid suffering and pain, grounded in the right to the pursuit of happiness—interpreted as entailing the right to try to avoid unhappiness, including suffering and pain.