Human dignity and the right to assisted suicide

Abstract

If a person competently requests another person to assist her in dying, she thereby exercises her normative power to make the act permissible that belongs to her rights over her own body. Denying a person this normative power means, on the view developed in this chapter, to disrespect her human dignity. We thus argue against views that regard terminating one’s own life (by the help of others) as morally impermissible for reasons of human dignity. At the same time, however, we do not think that exercises of a person’s normative power to end her life provide others with any reasons to help nor does it put them' under a duty to assist. Respect for human dignity only requires us to respect a person’s normative power to make assisting acts morally permissible