Legalization Of Euthanasia Research Articles

Three Current Religious Issues: Marriage of Priests, Intermarriage, and Euthenasia

W hether or not Catholic priests should be allowed to marry (an organizational issue), the approval of three types of intermarriage (a social issue), and the degree of acceptance of one form of legalized euthanasia (a legal issue) are three religious issues currently being debated for which data exist in the polls. The data dealing with the acceptance of the marriage of Catholic priests compare the attitudes of the French and American Catholic populations. The French survey was conducted by the Institut Francais d'Opinion Publique (IFOP #M-041) during 1971. The U.S.A. survey (AIPO #874) was administered during 1973. The 1973 U.S. survey also contains the data dealing with the possible acceptance of the legalization of euthanasia. D)ata on the degree of acceptance of religious and racial intermarriage are located in the AIPO survey #859, conducted during 1972. All three surveys are available from the Roper Public Opinion Research Center. On the basis of the data (see Table 1), it appears that a greater proportion of the French Catholics approved of the possible marriage of priests than white U.S. Catholics. In terms of this context, U.S. Catholics were more conservative than were the French. Within each country, there was no statistically significant difference due to the sex of the respondent. The distributions found in Tables 2 to 4 were based upon national U.S. samples only. Table 2 shows the extent of approval of three forms of intermarriage. A majority of both white Protestants and Catholics disapproved of white-black intermarriages, as did one third of the blacks. Catholics were more likely to approve all three forms of intermarriage than were Protestants; is this a function of or in spite of the Catholic Church pressures on prospective spouses to convert or, at least, to agree to raise the children as Catholics? In addition, the degree of acceptance of intermarriage remained relatively constant irrespective of which type of religious intermarriage was being asked. Analyses of variance indicated that religion (categorized as Protestant or Catholic) had a statistically significant effect upon attitudes toward the intermarriage of Protestants and Catholics (F=16.34, df=l, p < .001) and Jews and non-Jews (F=21.91, df=l, p < .001). The effect of sex upon both attitudes was not statistically significant. Nor were two-way interactions of religion and sex significant.

The Legal Aspects of Medical Euthanasia

With this pragmatic limitation, it may be said that euthanasia can be carried out by the physician in one of three general ways: (1) by an affirmative act designed to bring about death, such as the injection of air into a patient's veins; (2) by refusing to commence, or continue further, ordinary medical treatment required to maintain life; or (3) by refusing to commence, or continue further, heroic or extraordinary measures, such as the use of a heart-lung machine following massive stroke. Each of these means of allowing, or causing death to occur as the case may be involves different considerations affecting the legality of euthanasia.