"You got me into this...": Procreative responsibility and its implications for suicide and euthanasia

Résumé

This paper investigates connections between procreative ethics and the ethics of suicide and euthanasia. Regarding euthanasia/assisted suicide, we might think it too demanding to ask parents to help euthanize their terminally ill, suffering child, but had the parents not procreated, their child wouldn't need euthanizing. If you need help killing yourself, shouldn't your parents, who got you into life in the first place—without your consent—help you out of it? Yet knowing that your parents would help you kill yourself may increase your desire to die: a conundrum. Regarding suicide, the fact that we are forced into life should bolster the right to suicide, even for reasons that others might find wanting. The ways in which we are brought into life have moral implications for the ways in which we are entitled to get out of it. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved) SUICIDE-COMPLÉTÉ EUTHANASIE SUICIDE-ASSISTÉ ÉTHIQUE CONSENTEMENT