Portugal Legalizes Limited Euthanasia

Image copyright: EPA [via The Guardian]

The Spin

Progressive narrative

The legalization of euthanasia is a move in the right direction to ensure that people are entitled to die with dignity, with European countries leading this trend. Though this benevolent practice is complementary to access to good palliative care, it has long been a privilege of the White upper class while the working class has to find other alternatives to end their suffering.

Conservative narrative

Palliative care and medicine for pain control have advanced so much that patients do not have to suffer intolerable pain anymore, meaning that the main argument in favor of euthanasia is based on a false dichotomy between death and physical suffering. Even if this was the case, the value of human life must never be reduced to present perceptions of pain.


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