The Logic of Euthanasia Consciousness: Euthanizing Prisoners

This story is a perfect example of how euthanasia advocacy leads toward a pro-suicide mindset. A UK prison reformer advocates that prisoners who are depressed about their confinement have access to euthanasia. “”We have one life, it is our own life and prisoners should be able to end it with dignity if that is what they want,” Mark Leech, editor of the Prisons Handbook, told The Mirror.

“There will have to be checks and balances. I would like to see a high court judge involved. The court would have to be convinced he knew exactly what he was doing, that his mental state was fine, his decision was irreversible, that this was his life and this was what he wanted to do. We have one life, it is our own life and prisoners should be able to end it with dignity if that is what they want.”

This is not as dumb as it may appear upon first reflection. Indeed, Leech’s advocacy is a logical conclusion to be drawn from accepting the premises of euthanasia advocacy: If individual autonomy is near-absolute, as euthanasia ideologues contend, and if killing is an acceptable answer to human suffering, why not permit the depressed and confined to end it all? Such are the moral cliffs off of which we will fall once we swallow the intellectual hemlock of euthanasia consciousness.