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Fighting Against

Euthanasia &
Assisted Suicide

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Our Position

North Carolina Right to Life opposes euthanasia and assisted suicide. National Right to Life has defined Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide in the following way:

EUTHANASIA

Euthanasia is the intentional killing by act or omission of a dependent human being for his or her alleged benefit.

VOLUNTARY EUTHANASIA

When the person who is killed has requested to be killed

NON-VOLUNTARY EUTHANASIA

When the person who is killed made no request and gave no consent

INVOLUNTARY EUTHANASIA

When the person who is killed made an expressed wish to the contrary

ASSISTED SUICIDE

Someone provides an individual with the information, guidance, and means to take his or her own life with the intention that they will be used for this purpose. When it is a doctor who helps another person to kill themselves it is called “physician assisted suicide."

EUTHANASIA BY ACTION

Intentionally causing a person’s death by performing an action such as by giving a lethal injection

EUTHANASIA BY OMISSION

Intentionally causing death by not providing necessary and ordinary (usual and customary) care or food and water

“… we must be wary of those who are too willing to end the lives of the elderly and the ill. If we ever decide that a poor quality of life justifies ending that life, we have taken a step down a slippery slope that places all of us in danger. There is a difference between allowing nature to take its course and actively assisting death. The call for euthanasia surfaces in our society periodically, as it is doing now under the guise of “death with dignity” or assisted suicide. Euthanasia is a concept, it seems to me, that is in direct conflict with a religious and ethical tradition in which the human race is presented with ” a blessing and a curse, life and death,” and we are instructed ‘…therefore, to choose life.” I believe ‘euthanasia’ lies outside the commonly held life-centered values of the West and cannot be allowed without incurring great social and personal tragedy. This is not merely an intellectual conundrum. This issue involves actual human beings at risk…"

C. Everett Koop, M.D.

Taken from the book KOOP, The Memoirs of America’s Family Doctor by C. Everett Koop, M.D., Random House, 199

The Will to Live Project

The Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics

Need help with a friend or family member
who is being denied care?

The Alliance Defending Freedom

Terry Shiavo Life & Hope Network

NC Omsbudsman

Other Resources

Patients Rights Action Fund

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