The legitimacy of the slippery slope argument against the admissibility of medical aid in dying

Abstract

Slippery slope argument against physician’s assistance in dying  is often used in ethical debates and even more often in public space. The essence of this argumentation is to show that acceptance of one truly right action must unavoidably lead to acceptance of one truly wrong action. It can be justified in two ways. Firstly, by showing an appropriate empirical data and secondly, by demonstrating that the distinction between two above mentioned actions is totally arbitrary and then presuming that this arbitrariness must lead to inefficiency of such border.

            This argument is used in inappropriate ways. First of all, it is used by people who think that both actions are wrong. They decided to use this argumentation in order to hide their real views (e.g. that suicide is immoral because of religious faith). Others have transform slippery slope argument into a very different one called “non-principled distinction”. This one was only mentioned in this article. Secondly, data collected by many studies has shown that there is no empirical slippery slope from  the acceptance of physician’s assistance in dying to development of social pressure on vulnerable groups to ask for such procedures. Actually something the opposite: has been shown The excluded people have more difficult access to euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide.