Euthanasia: A social justice perspective.

摘要

This dissertation evaluates the contributions of Roman Catholic perspectives on social justice, particularly the concept of the common good, to the debate about physician-assisted suicide.; The larger questions of euthanasia are situated within the moral theological discussions of the manualists who failed to account for the complexity of the total person and her circumstances, including her relationships with others and society. The current revisionist or proportionalist movement in Roman Catholic ethics, while moving the tradition in the direction of considering the wider context of bioethical problems, still continues to approach medical ethics problems in a primarily individualistic manner.; Two official documents of the Church, the Declaration on Euthanasia and Evangelium Vitae, are evaluated in light of how they have incorporated the insights and emphases of proportionalist thought in their theology and in what way these documents included in their moral analyses social considerations in their approach to bioethical dilemmas.; The Church's emphasis on social justice resonates with the secular bioethics move toward a 'cultural bioethics' which focuses on the societal implications of medical decisions. This emphasis is producing serious reflection about the individual's relation to society and the common good. Cultural bioethics critiques the way in which the contemporary discussion of euthanasia in the United States primarily supports an individualism based on contractarian models of social life to the detriment of a consideration of the common good. The perspective of social justice can shift the euthanasia debate by considering the person not as an autonomous agent but as a total person in a web of social interdependence.; The common good perspective recognizes that persons can be valued even in states of illness, suffering and disability. A social justice perspective can reply to 'right to die' advocates with a more complete understanding of interdependence. It can address cost-benefit considerations in health care reform by asserting that resource allocation must be done in a way that respects the vulnerable members of society as participants in the common good who are called to a destiny that transcends human society.