In the post Why Brittany Maynard Should Inspire Us to Oppose Euthanasia in All Cases for The Blaze, conservative blogger Matt Walsh argues against the
legalization of physician assisted suicide.
To create an effective argument, Walsh utilizes all five types of claims,
with proposal arguments being the most prevalent. Walsh uses definitional claims to establish
that physician assisted suicide is a death by prescribed medication, and it is
the medication that ends the patient’s life, not the disease that allowed them
to be prescribed the medication. Walsh
also uses definitional arguments to define what he believes a right is as well
as a choice and the difference between the two.
He compares the names given to physician assisted suicide, aid in dying
and dying with dignity, to other forms of death, murder and suicide, using a
resemblance argument. A causal argument
is used to predict the potential consequences of legalizing Death with Dignity,
such as changes in the law to allow competent children to opt for euthanasia subsequently
leading to parents being allowed to opt for euthanasia without the child’s
consent for both competent and incompetent children. Walsh uses and ethical argument to describe
the Hippocratic oath that physicians take and the ways he believes that
physician assisted suicide violates that oath.
Throughout the entirety of the blog, Walsh uses a proposal argument to
state that euthanasia should be completely opposed and prohibited world-wide. Matt Walsh is able to create an effective
argument by not only utilizing ethos, pathos, and logos, but by utilizing many
types of claims as the building blocks for his case against physician assisted
suicide.
