This essay by Janet Radcliffe Richards demonstrates how people often use arguments based on emotional appeals instead of logical thinking when it comes to sensitive and complex issues like Euthanasia. In order to do so, the author illustrates three common arguments against voluntary euthanasia that portend to be opposed to the concept because of one reason or another, but the author shows us they are all illogical emotional appeals masking the fact that those who use them are opposed to voluntary euthanasia outright. Often, those who argue against voluntary euthanasia are really unwilling to say what that they do so because of other reasons. For example, Richards discusses the fact that many people opposed to voluntary euthanasia say they take such a stand because they believe the goal of living is to make people’s lives worth living by controlling their pain and making them feel better. However, the author says this is a fudge of the first order and these people mean something else altogether “To the extent that they have a purpose, precisely what they achieve is to force continuing life on people whose sufferings we have not managed to prevent…It seems obvious, once again, that its proponents really disapprove of suicide altogether, but are unwilling to face the fact that this may mean forcing people to remain alive in agony” (Richards 132).
Another argument Richards exposes for its fallibility is the one adopted by those who feel that if we make voluntary euthanasia legal we will be setting up a situation where relatives and physicians will suddenly turn to coercing sick relatives or patients to die. Again, the author shows us the hidden agenda in such spurious arguments—an agenda that regards suicide as morally unacceptable under any conditions. For as the author states “Even if suicide were allowed, I do not see why people who did not want the risk
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