San Antonio College Library

The debate over euthanasia, including its themes and rhetoric, has evolved throughout history. While during the eighteenth up through the early twentieth centuries, the debate focused on the ideas of mercy killing and easy death, during the latter part of the twentieth century, specifically in the 1960s through the 1980s, euthanasia was pushed forward by such ideas as individual rights, self-determination, and choice in dying.

"It seems that modern medicine has put the cure of bodies before the care of persons. Some scholars attribute this to a metaphysical heritage of dualism and reductionism. This heritage has become problematic in the modern age when waning belief in a divine order leaves the individual self as the bearer of meaning. At the same time, knowledge about nature and society has been increasing at such an accelerated pace, it has become even more difficult...