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A Principled Libertarian Position on Euthanasia
By Dio ·
In this article, I hope to give you, the reader, the philosophical groundwork to formulate a principled libertarian position on euthanasia.
Definition
Euthanasia is when a medical practitioner intentionally administers a lethal medication or performs another intervention for the purpose of ending a patient's life, typically at the patient's voluntary request and with the stated goal of relieving suffering.
Self-Ownership and the NAP
Under the libertarian principle of self-ownership, every individual has an inalienable natural right of exclusive ownership over their own body. The Non-Aggression Principle (NAP) follows by prohibiting the initiation of force against that person or their legitimately held property.
Based on Hans-Hermann Hoppe's Argumentation Ethics, self-ownership is self-evident. You cannot argue against your own control over yourself without contradicting yourself, because by making that argument, you are already exercising control over your own body.
But what exactly is consent?
Consent is voluntary permission for someone to perform a certain action. However, there are some things you simply cannot consent to. You cannot, for example, consent to slavery. If your right over yourself is inalienable, you cannot sign that right away and make another person your rightful owner.
I believe euthanasia follows a similar principle. The question isn't whether you can give another person some control over your body—you obviously can—but how far that delegated authority can actually extend.
So, Why?
Surgery, boxing, getting a tattoo, prostitution, and selling an organ all run on the same basic principle: consent. You consent to perform certain actions yourself or have them done to you. Without that consent, many of these actions would just be aggression.
Self-ownership and the NAP are derived from the Ultimate Value, being Life. Without Life, there is no individual to possess rights in the first place.
Now, this does not mean suicide itself violates the NAP. You own yourself, and therefore you are the only person who can make the decision to end your own life. Even if that decision is irrational or completely against your own self-interest, you aren't aggressing against another person by doing it.
The problem starts when another person is brought into the lethal act.
There is a difference between exercising control over yourself and authorizing someone else to intentionally exercise lethal force against you. Suicide is something you do to yourself. Euthanasia requires another person to intentionally perform the act that kills you.
This doesn't mean temporarily giving someone control over your body violates the NAP. Surgery under anesthesia is an obvious example. You can authorize a surgeon to operate on you while unconscious, and you can knowingly accept a risk of death or permanent incapacity. You still own yourself throughout the procedure. The surgeon has merely been given limited authority to perform a particular action.
The difference is that death during surgery is a risk of the authorized action, not the purpose of the action itself. In euthanasia, intentionally causing death is the authorized action.
So the question isn't whether control can ever be delegated. It clearly can. The question is whether self-ownership allows you to authorize another person to intentionally destroy the person from whom that authority originates.
I would argue that it does not. You can exercise an inalienable right and authorize limited actions under it without being able to alienate the right itself. Just as consent cannot make another person your rightful owner, I don't believe it can make another person your rightful killer.
Where Is the Line?
This raises another question: what actually counts as euthanasia?
Suppose someone asks which gun would be most effective for suicide. Another person recommends one, sells it to them, prepares it, or hands it to them. None of those actions necessarily means that person killed them.
The important distinction is who performs the lethal act. If I provide someone with the means to kill themselves and they voluntarily perform the final act, the lethal physical agency remains theirs. If I intentionally perform the lethal act upon them myself, I am now exercising lethal force against another person.
That is where I would draw the NAP-relevant line: not between involvement and non-involvement, but between assisting someone's exercise of control over themselves and personally performing the lethal act upon them.
The Murky Line of Consent
There is also a pretty murky problem with determining whether euthanasia was actually consensual.
If one person kills another and then claims that the other person consented to dying, how exactly are we supposed to know that consent was actually given? The only other person who knows exactly what happened is now dead.
Someone could murder another person and afterward claim the victim asked to die. Even with written or recorded consent, there are still questions. Was the person mentally competent when they gave it? Were they under pressure? Did they change their mind? Did they revoke their consent immediately before they were killed?
Obviously, this alone doesn't prove every case of euthanasia is aggression. It does, however, show the problem with treating consent as an automatic defense for one person intentionally killing another.
Capacity, Coercion, and Proxy Consent
Consent isn't valid just because someone says yes. You have to actually understand what you're consenting to and be capable of making that decision yourself. Someone being coerced, threatened, deceived, or otherwise incapable of understanding the decision cannot legitimately consent.
Then there is proxy consent.
If someone is unconscious or otherwise incapable of making the decision themselves, can someone else consent to euthanasia for them?
I would argue no. A family member, guardian, or medical practitioner does not own the patient. They might be trusted to make certain decisions in that person's best interest, but that doesn't transfer ownership of the person to them. Being unable to exercise your rights does not suddenly give someone else ownership over you.
This is different from previously consenting to something like surgery while you were competent. In that case, the authority comes from your own prior consent. A proxy deciding that you should die would be creating an authority you never personally exercised.
The Libertarian Counterargument
The strongest libertarian argument against my position is pretty simple:
If you own yourself, why can't you consent for someone else to end your life?
Consent already allows other people to perform actions that would otherwise be aggression. If suicide doesn't violate the NAP, why would voluntarily having someone else do it for you?
Under this argument, euthanasia isn't surrendering self-ownership. It's exercising it.
My Rebuttal
My response is that self-ownership certainly allows you to delegate some control over your body. What I reject is the idea that every action you may perform upon yourself therefore becomes an action you may authorize another person to perform upon you.
Surgery demonstrates the difference. A surgeon can be authorized to operate on you even while you're unconscious and even when the procedure carries a risk of death. But the authorization is to perform the procedure, not to intentionally kill you.
Euthanasia goes further. The lethal act itself is what another person is being authorized to perform.
If self-ownership is genuinely inalienable, I don't believe it can be exercised to authorize another person to intentionally extinguish the rights-holder themselves. You can exercise self-ownership and delegate limited authority under it, but you cannot use it to make another person your rightful killer.
Conclusion
Ultimately, your right over yourself is inalienable. You can exercise that right yourself and delegate substantial control over your body without surrendering ownership.
But I don't believe that delegated authority extends to another person intentionally performing the lethal act upon you. Suicide remains an action upon yourself, euthanasia makes another person the direct agent of your death.
For this reason, I believe euthanasia is incompatible with the NAP.