The practice of health care providers at all levels brings you into contact with people from a variety of faiths. This calls for basic knowledge and understanding of different faith expressions. No matter what someone’s worldview is, death and dying is a difficult experience whether emotions are expressed or not. For the purpose of this assignment, the focus will be on the Christian worldview.
Read the “Case Study: End-of-Life Decisions” document or one provided by your instructor. Based on the reading of the case, the Christian worldview, and the worldview questions presented in the required topic Resources, you will complete an ethical analysis of situation of the individual(s) and their decisions from the perspective of the Christian worldview.
Based on your reading of “Case Study: End-of-Life Decisions” document (or one provided by your instructor) and topic Resources, complete the “Death and Dying: Case Analysis” document, in which you will analyze the case study in relation to the following:
- Christian view of the fallen world and the hope of resurrection
- Christian worldview of the value of life
- Christian worldview of suffering
- Empathy for the individual(s) as they are supported and cared, actions, and their consequences
- Respect for the perspectives of individual(s) different from personal and professional values, conscious and unconscious biases related to human rights in health care practice, actions, and their consequences
- Personal decision-making based on personal worldview
Support your response using only the following Topic 4 Resources:
- Chapter 4 from the textbook Practicing Dignity: An Introduction to Christian Values and Decision-Making in Health Care (attached)
- “Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia: Theological and Ethical Responses” (attached)
- “Always Care, Never Kill: How Physician-Assisted Suicide Endangers the Weak, Corrupts Medicine, Compromises the Family, and Violates Human Dignity and Equality” (attached)
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PHI-413V-RS-T4DeathAndDyingCaseAnalysis.docx
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PHI-413V-RS-T4CaseStudyEndOfLifeDecisions.docx
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Physician-AssistedSuicideandEuthanasia.pdf
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AlwaysCareNeverKill.pdf
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BibliU-Print-B1B4SGSSID7LR-Part4.pdf
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Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia: Theological and Ethical Responses
DANIEL P. SULMASY* Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA
*Address correspondence to: Daniel P. Sulmasy, MD, PhD, MACP, Director, Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University, Healy 419, 3700 O St., NW
Washington, DC 20057, USA. E-mail: [email protected].
Euthanasia and rational suicide were acceptable practices in some quarters in antiquity. These practices all but disappeared as Hippocratic, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim beliefs took hold in Europe and the Near East. By the late nineteenth century, however, a political movement to le- galize euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS) began in Europe and the United States. Initially, the path to legalization was filled with obstacles, especially in the United States. In the last few decades, how- ever, several Western nations have legalized euthanasia, and several US jurisdictions have now legalized PAS, giving state sanction to these once forbidden practices. With increasing social and political pressure to ac- cept PAS, Christians need to understand how to think about this issue from an explicitly Christian perspective. Independent of the question of legalization, there are significant theological and ethical questions. This special issue aims to address those concerns, including: how does the practice of PAS or euthanasia impact our attitudes toward death, and what does it mean to “die well?” Should physicians, as healers, be in- volved in assisting patients who wish to bring about their own death? Are these methods significantly distinguished from other ethically justi- fied practices in end-of-life care that also lead to a person’s death? Can Christians, both as patients and practitioners, justify the use of these methods to relieve suffering in this manner as compatible with the faith? Although these questions are not new to the debate, it is increasingly im- portant that these controversies are addressed as the practice of PAS is popularized.
Keywords: Christianity, euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide
Through a generous grant from the McDonald Agape Foundation, a series of annual conferences convened to examine controversies in Christian thought
Introduction
Christian Bioethics, 27(3), 223–227 2021 https://doi.org/10.1093/cb/cbab015
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