Legalization of Voluntary Active Euthanasia—Focusing on Terminally Ill Patients

• Main Authors: Ting-Yun Shen, 沈婷勻
• Other Authors: 李茂生
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/qvcs2z

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 法律學研究所 === 106 === Following the euthanasia legislation trend all around the world, the importance of euthanasia topics is more prominent than before. Although there are still a lot of controversies, people concern about these topics worldwide. The issues on euthanasia are valued recently in Taiwan as well, while Hospice-Palliative Care Act has come into force for many years, and Patient''s Self-determination Right Act has been passed in 2016. The purpose of this thesis is to discuss legalization of voluntary active euthanasia in Taiwanese laws and related criminal issues. The central issue in this thesis is whether terminally ill patients have rights to choose voluntary active euthanasia without any interference or not. First of all, this thesis explains the concept and classification of euthanasia. Secondly, this thesis reviews criminal regulations, judicial judgments, and scholarly papers, and other research on this issue in Netherland, Oregon (a state of the U.S.), Japan, and Taiwan. Then, this thesis develops several philosophical and ethical arguments about euthanasia from different aspects, including paternalism, liberalism, the operation of power of governance as well as medical ethics. Besides, this thesis discovers legalization foundations from the perspective of Constitution of the Republic of China (Taiwan), including right to life, human dignity and individual autonomy. From this viewpoint, the power of national penalty should be limited. Even though article 275 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of China cannot be abolished, this thesis still makes efforts to seek some possible solutions. This thesis deeply agrees that voluntary active euthanasia must be approved in exceptional cases, especially in such circumstances of terminally ill patients. Moreover, this thesis attempts to propose the legitimate conditions and procedure of voluntary active euthanasia. Last but not least, for the sake of protecting and improving individual rights, this thesis provides some solutions to this dilemma and hopes that there will be more research in these issues in the future.