Action & Will
This is the refusal or discontinuation of a patient's life support with the intention to hasten his or her death.
What is passive euthanasia?
This is the first country to legalize physician-assisted suicide.
What is Switzerland?
This is what "euthanasia" translates to from the Greek.
What is "good death?"
Case Study #1
What is active voluntary euthanasia?
This type of cooperation “occurs when an action, either by its very nature or by the form it takes in a concrete situation, can be defined as a direct participation in an [immoral] act . . . or a sharing in the immoral intention of the person committing it."
What is formal cooperation with evil?
This is the injection of one or more lethal drugs in the patient with the intention to hasten his or her death.
What is active euthanasia?
This is the first US state to legalize physician-assisted suicide?
What is Oregon?
This is the act a patient commits when he refuses nutrition or hydration in order to hasten his death.
What is VSED?
Case Study #2
What is passive non-voluntary euthanasia?
This occurs when there is a degree of causal separation between one's own action (which in and of itself is not immoral) and the immoral action of another. Here, the more remote (further from the immoral act) the more likely it is morally permissible.
What is mediate material cooperation?
This is when euthanasia is performed on a patient who requests it.
What is voluntary euthanasia?
This is the set of guidelines the Netherlands' approved for the euthanizing of a newborn baby who, in the judgement of his doctors, is experiencing unbearable pain.
What is the Groningen Protocol?
This type of dignity is inscribed in the very nature of every human being. It cannot be lost or taken away.
What is intrinsic dignity?
Case Study #3
What is physician-assisted suicide?
This is when an action "is so intimately linked with [another's] immoral act that they are nearly indistinguishable. Most theologians agree this is always immoral, while few others think it can be permissible only under the gravest reasons. In practice, it is virtually never morally permissible.
What is immediate material cooperation with evil?
This is when euthanasia is performed on a patient who explicitly rejects it and the act is performed on him or her anyway.
What is involuntary euthanasia?
This country is seeing a significant increase in euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, as well as a broadening of inclusion parameters since its Medical Aid in Dying Act passed in 2016 - from 1,018 that year, to 13,241 in 2022.
What is Canada?
This type of medicine is the appropriate (and moral) response to a patient who is in the midst of despair because of his pain, suffering, or the symptoms associated with his disease or treatments.
What is palliative medicine?
Case Study #4
What is active involuntary euthanasia?
This is “an attitude or behavior which leads another to do evil."
What is scandal?
This is when euthanasia is performed on a patient who is unconscious and the act is chosen by his or her proxy.
What is non-voluntary euthanasia?
This is the 13th and most recent US state to legalize physician-assisted suicide, with the law going into effect in September 2026.
What is Illinois?
This is the key distinction between passive euthanasia and the withdrawal of extraordinary means.
What is intention?
This is the name of the retired pathologist in Michigan who participated in the suicide of over 100 people, and in the euthanizing of at least one person.
Who is Dr. Jack Kevorkian?
This is a type of formal cooperation with evil that some physicians will commit when they refuse to prescribe the lethal drugs to a patient who requests them, but will provide the means for the patient to see another physician who will write such a prescription. It is always an immoral act.
What is a referral?