7 - Euthanasia

Summary

But if the disease be not only incurable, but also full of continual pain and anguish, then the priests and the magistrates exhort the man (seeing that he is not able to do any duty of life, and by overliving his own death is noisome and irksome to others and grievous to himself) that he will determine with himself no longer to cherish that pestilent and painful disease; and … either dispatch himself out of that painful life, as out of a prison or rack of torment, or else suffer himself to be willingly rid of it by another.

Thomas More, Utopia

In composing his rational utopia, More aimed to dispel what he saw as the cobwebs of superstition prevailing in Europe, not least with respect to the treatment of the dying and the forbidden topic of suicide. He could see no great difference between suicide and the killing of another so long as the death was desired by the person put to death and undertaken to bring relief from an incurable and painful disease “as out of a prison or rack of torment.” In this sense, More was a forceful representative of view A, placing restrictions rather than prohibitions on both suicide and killing persons wishing to die. And he aimed explicitly to distance himself from holders of the prevailing view C, prohibiting both forms of taking human life as murder and as a grave abuse of divine powers over life and death.