Although euthanasia is commonly understood to be the epitome of mercy and the logical extension of “death with dignity”, the legalization of euthanasia should be expected to lead to forms of killing which have no necessary connection with either mercy or dignity. Would euthanasia, once legalized, remain the rare event it has been up to the present? We think not. Consider what has happened with abortion. The fundamental act described blankly by the word abortion has been obscured by arguments about rights and freedoms. Legalization of abortion was also originally proposed to be merely the process of legalizing what was already happening; i.e., abortion for the rare pregnancies arising from rape and the occasional situation in which there was judged to be a real risk to the mother’s health. It has become the most frequent medical procedure in Canada. The numerical result of legalization of abortion world-wide is 50 million procedures a year.
