ABSTRACT
This chapter approaches PAS not as a problem of individual morality but rather as a social policy challenge. Two distinct slippery slope arguments are deployed to demonstrate that the legalization of PAS would pose serious and eminently predictable social harms. Central to the author's argument will be the claim that the recently overturned decisions of the circuit courts employ a form of case-based reasoning that is ill-suited to the development of sound social policy in this area. In response to the traditional objections that allowing PAS would subvert the states interests in preventing suicide and maintaining the integrity of the medical profession, Judge Reinhardt contended that poeple's society already has effectively erased the distinction between merely allowing patients to die and killing them. The supreme court has thus reached a sound decision in ruling out a constitutional right to PAS. As the Justices acknowledged, however, this momentous decision will not end the moral debate over PAS and euthanasia.
