An Outside Force
Must I not then postulate an outside force, or power which enables me to possess rights? Is it then not necessary to postulate an outside agency so that two persons claiming equal and at times opposing rights can approach in appeal? The protagonists for euthanasia deny this logical extension. They would rather say – we have only the empirical fact of existence. Why go into the next step of postulating a Creator or creative force?
From rights to values, is but a step and introspection will show that they are co–dependent. Still, even if one denies an outside force, power or person (on which account we hold our lives in stewardship), no one can put aside the ethic of an absolute value for human life.
No action therefore, should denigrate the inestimable value of even a single member of the species, homo sapiens. It does not matter how compassionate the reasons or expedient the outcome. Inestimable value cannot be denied or made relative on the basis of social worth, status or usefulness of that individual to society. The motives may be good, and in the interest of society, but the denial of this right to even one of the species, denigrates the species as a whole. No end, however good, can be an excuse to justify any means. If ever, this intrinsic and inestimable value is denied to any one human being, then the whole species is debased. If any person, or even an objective board, made legally competent by society, were to deny this value to another human being, then that society stands condemned by its own hand.
If situations, circumstances or handicap were to be cited as conditioning the intrinsic and inestimable value of a human being, we have consented to the debasement of that very value which members of the species, homo sapiens, treasure most. Truly, the use of outcome, or externals, to permit the limitation of intrinsic and inestimable value puts, as it were, a price on human worth. Euthanasia then becomes a cheap way out. Without making a plea for capital punishment, the only argument for it with some merit, is that where one individual willfully and with full knowledge, destroys another of the same species, homo sapiens, he forfeits his own individual right, thus abrogating his own value.
