Dr. Thomas Finegan:

When we overturn something as fundamental as the principle against intentional killing, it brings choices for death and killing into legitimate healthcare. Even if all such future choices were safeguarded from coercion, it would still be the case that the central purpose of healthcare is being overturned or at least severely qualified. That will change how people see themselves. It will change how different options are presented to people. It will change the sorts of options presented to people. An example of this would be in the case of someone approaching end of life or has a severe illness and is older. It would now be a live option for such people to access euthanasia. The law allowing that choice presents them almost with the responsibility to judge their life, as to whether they are a burden on others or their life is now worth living. That extra burdening on an individual to make those judgements about themselves is corrosive of their own sense of self worth and of others' appreciation of who they are, and it will play out negatively for solidarity between people, especially elderly people and sick and disabled people. That holds even if that person, after scrutinising his or her life for its burdensomeness or quality, freely chooses, uncoerced, to procure euthanasia.

Even though it is done freely, great harm has still occurred in terms of how we treat and that person and how they interact with others.

Increasingly, we see the practical implications of this working themselves out all across Europe and in Canada. Again, it is not merely abstract. One of the points I tried to make in my written submission is that when we talk about safeguards, for instance, a pro-euthanasia perspective refers to safeguards in terms of preventing coercion, that works both ways, which means that the idea of safeguards would seek to prevent people being influenced away from a choice of euthanasia. Euthanasia is then presented, in one sense, in a completely morally neutral fashion. That in itself contains a judgment that there is nothing wrong with or undesirable about euthanasia. That idea is now incorporated into healthcare and will work its way out in all sorts of ways to education, promotion, training, views, things that are said and left unsaid, etc. It is very difficult. No one here can predict all the ways it will work itself out. We see the effects of it in Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium and so on. We might not like it. We might consider it horrible but what we cannot say is that it is the limit, because what we are overturning is so fundamental. It is the idea now that death can become a part of medical treatment.