My Parent’s Dignified Death is Different from Mine: Moral Problem Solving about Euthanasia

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to explore the moral problem solving of Israeli adult children concerning passive euthanasia when considering the death of any citizen in society, one’s own death, a partner’s death, and the impending death of an elderly ill parent. The qualitative analysis of 12 in-depth interview transcripts by analytic induction and constant comparison methods revealed how adults think about moral problems that are of differing distances from the self. A parents’ death, compared with other deaths, elicited strong emotional reactions and was associated with reasoning struggles that involved a wide range of role perspectives; a moral orientation of care; and value priorities of honor through loyalty, compassion and devotion.

Turkish Health Professional's Attitude Toward Euthanasia

“…According to Leichtentritt and Retting (1999), the legalization of euthanasia would cause a general weakening of public and social morality. Many doctors in South Africa favor mercy killing (Landman, 2001).…”

The Good Death: Reaching an Inductive Understanding

“…The Israeli social context is further unique as the individual's rights regarding end-of-life decisions have only recently emerged, and these rights are currently being implemented with many difficulties (Glick, 1997;Resnik, 1998). There is not yet appropriate terminology in the Hebrew language referring to the different aspects of euthanasia (passive, active, voluntary, involuntary), and a living-will is not yet legally valid (Leichtentritt & Rettig, 1999b).…”

Elderly Israelis and their family members meanings towards euthanasia.

“…“Every human situation is novel, emergent, and filled with multiple, often conflicting, meanings and interpretations” (Diesing, 1971, p.25). Therefore, in order to reach an inductive understanding of human experiences, social scientists need to think dialectically (Leichtentritt & Rettig, 1999). Contextual theory assists researchers in using the dialectic understanding since it gives equal emphasis to past and present time perspectives including interpersonal and intrapsychic dimensions of human life, and the relational and social contexts of individuals (Boszormenyi-Nagy & Urlich, 1981).…”

“…On the contrary, the relational perspective recognizes connections between individuals and their family and social contexts, concluding that individuals cannot be addressed as autonomous persons in questions regarding end-of-life. The relational aspects of euthanasia have not yet been incorporated into the guidelines of medical professionals, although they are accepted in communitarian philosophy (Glick, 1997), the contextual theory perspective (Boszormenyi-Nagy, 1987), and in several research studies (Leichtentritt & Rettig, 1999; Rothchild, 1994).…”

“…The intentions of this research were to uncover the meanings toward various forms of euthanasia and the ways in which these meanings were voiced. Previous studies that have examined these issues have described opposite values that were simultaneously considered (Leichtentritt, 1998) and conflicting ethical considerations that were present in the thinking of informants (Leichtentritt & Rettig, 1999). This wisdom led to selection of the dialectic philosophy (Diesing, 1971) with contextual theory (Boszormenyi-Nagy, 1976) to guide interpretations of results in the current study.…”