The Right to Die
WATCH
Past Event | April 17, 2018
The Right to Die

For the longest while, the practice of medicine had a specific purpose: to heal. The Hippocratic oath still affirms this. Recently, however, many have argued that it should include the right of patients to take their own life when they, or a medical professional, no longer believes it worth living. The “right to die” movement is not only a movement about the rights of individual patients to end their life on their own terms but, in part, requiring health care professionals and providers to provide the means by which to do so. The moral and legal implications of the use of the art of medicine to end life are considerable. The impact on religious health care institutions and even private business who oppose the practice of euthanasia is also considerable. For example, will corporations such as Hobby Lobby now be required to subsidize, via their health care benefits, provisions for active euthanasia? Will Catholic hospitals who refuse to comply have state funds withheld as a result?

Howard Simon | Executive Director
ACLU of Florida
Dr. Zulmarie Ortiz | Medical Director
VITAS Healthcare
Dr. Marin Gillis | Chief of the Division of Ethics, Humanities and the Arts
Florida International University
Hon Ari Porth | Circuit Court Judge
Seventeenth Judicial Circuit of Florida