THE LAW'S DEFECTIVE PREMISE

[摘要] The laws that could culminate in criminal liability for the proper administration of euthanasia to a severely defective child share one common and basic premise with much of early medical practice in America and with dogmatically held popular beliefs against all euthanasia. This premise antedates and is made obsolete by the rise of modern health sciences and medical technology. The defective premise is that life, whatever its form, nature, or content, is necessarily and always a good, and that death, on any event that hastens death, is always and necessarily an evil and should be illegal. Law has a felt obligation to protect life to the fullest for each individual and seeks to assure each person's right to live out his life until its natural and inevitable end, which is legally defined as "cessation," meaning a total stoppage of the circulation of the blood and a cessation of all the animal and vital functions resting on blood circulation, such as pulse, respiration, etc. The problem is that, as commendatory as the law is in this regard, the law's basic premise applies only to the usual and ordinary person and was created with him in mind.... [T] his commonly shared premise is false. There simply is no plain, straightforward, and necessary connection between all human life itself, in each and every instance, whatever its character, and its always being a good.

[学科分类] 儿科学