But the practice of euthanasia systematically undermines both of the required dispositions. For it disposes doctors to kill certain of their patients, and it inculcates a disposition to think of some patients as not having worthwhile lives. Since there are no non-arbitrary criteria for determining who has and who has not a worthwhile life, the temptation to categorise the difficult and the unappealing as not having worthwhile lives is very strong for the person who has failed to eschew such discriminatory thinking as a matter of principle. It is an important part of the duty of the state to maintain a framework of law which is conducive to an essential profession such as medicine functioning well in the interests of citizens. The state would fail in that duty were the law to permit behaviour on the part of doctors which was corrosive of the doctor-patient relationship.
6. The legalization of euthanasia undermines the impetus to develop truly compassionate approaches to the care of the suffering and the dying The proper expression of compassion is care motivated by a more or less strong sense of sympathy with the affliction of the person suffering. But one cannot care for people by killing them. It is very important to bear in mind that a key element in the context of contemporary debates about legalizing euthanasia is the drive to reduce health care costs. One of the conspicuous dangers of legalization is that, before long, euthanasia would be seen as a convenient 'solution' to the heavy demands on care made by certain types of patient. Medicine would thereby be robbed of the incentive to find genuinely compassionate solutions to the difficulties presented by such patients. The kind of humane impulses which have sustained the development of hospice medicine and care would be undermined because too many would think euthanasia a cheaper and less personally demanding solution.
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