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Voluntary euthanasia is the purposeful ending of another person's life at their request, in order to relieve them of suffering.Voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS) have been the focus of intense debate in the 21st century, surrounding the idea of a right to die.
Active voluntary euthanasia is legal in Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Passive voluntary euthanasia is legal throughout the US per Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health. When the patient brings about their own death with the assistance of a physician, the term assisted suicide is often used instead. Assisted suicide is ...
As applied to the euthanasia debate, the slippery slope argument claims that the acceptance of certain practices, such as physician-assisted suicide or voluntary euthanasia, will invariably lead to the acceptance or practice of concepts which are currently deemed unacceptable, such as non-voluntary or involuntary euthanasia.
Euthanasia efforts were revived during the 1960s and 1970s, under the right-to-die rubric, physician assisted death in liberal bioethics, and through advance directives and do not resuscitate orders. Several major court cases advanced the legal rights of patients, or their guardians, to withdraw medical support with the expected outcome of death.
Under Dutch law, euthanasia and assisted suicide can only be performed by doctors, and that is only legal in cases of "hopeless and unbearable" suffering. In practice, this means that it is limited to those with serious and incurable medical conditions (including mental illness ) and in considerable suffering like pain, hypoxia or exhaustion.
The name given to the act of MAiD varies by country: in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, and Luxembourg, the act is referred to as euthanasia; another European term is physician-assisted dying (PAD); and medical assistance in dying (MAiD) is the common term in Canada. The terms PAD and MAiD cover assisted suicide as well as euthanasia.
In December 2013, the Belgian Senate voted in favour of extending the euthanasia law to terminally ill children. Conditions imposed on children seeking euthanasia are that: the patient must be conscious of their decision and understand the meaning of euthanasia; the request must have been approved by the child's parents and medical team;
According to the author of Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, the policy went through a number of iterations and modifications: Of the five identifiable steps by which the Nazis carried out the principle of "life unworthy of life," coercive sterilization was the first. There followed the killing of ...