Title: Euthanasia Fact Sheet - The World Federation of Right to Die Societies
Headings: Euthanasia Fact Sheet
Euthanasia Fact Sheet
Introduction
Voluntary, non-voluntary and involuntary euthanasia
Active and passive euthanasia
Actions and omissions / Killing and letting die
Ordinary and extraordinary means
Intending death and foreseeing that death will occur
Conclusion
References
Further reading

Content: This distinguishes euthanasia from most other forms of taking life. Every society known to us subscribes to some principle or principles prohibiting the taking of life. But there are great variations between cultural traditions as to when the taking of life is considered wrong. If we turn to the roots of our Western tradition, we find that in Greek and Roman times such practices as infanticide, suicide and euthanasia were widely accepted. Most historians of Western morals agree that Judaism and the rise of Christianity contributed greatly to the general feeling that human life has sanctity and must not deliberately be taken. To take an innocent human life is, in these traditions, to usurp the right of God to give and take life. It has also been seen by influential Christian writers as a violation of natural law. This view of the absolute inviolability of innocent human life remained virtually unchallenged until the sixteenth century when Sir Thomas More published his Utopia. In this book, More portrays euthanasia for the desperately ill as one of the important institutions of an imaginary ideal community. In subsequent centuries, British philosophers (notably David Hume, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill) challenged the religious basis of morality and the absolute prohibition of suicide, euthanasia and infanticide.