Sanctity of Life
We may ask what value the notion of "sanctity of life" has when, in support of their positions, both proponents and opponents of suicide and voluntary euthanasia appeal to it. For example, Glanville Williams, a long time advocate in England of voluntary euthanasia and abortion, introduced his ideas to the American public in 1957 with a book entitled The Sanctity of Life and the Criminal Law. I Williams sees no incompatability between the sanctity of life principle and the practices he advocates. Yet Albert Schweitzer, having concluded on the basis of his African missionary work that human life was inviolable and sacred, formulated a view ofthe sanctity oflife (Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben! which could in no way admit what Williams proposes. We may ask, furthermore , what value the sanctity of life notion has when moralists differ so fundamentally as to its serviceability in ethical discourse . Marvin Kohl, the Fredonia State philosopher and advocate of "beneficent euthanasia," says of the notion,