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Many people hold that there is an important moral distinction between passive euthanasia and active euthanasia. Thus, while the AMA [American Medical Association] maintains that people have a right" to die with dignity," so that it is morally permissible for a doctor to allow someone to die if that person wants to and is suffering from an incurable illness causing pain that cannot be sufficiently alleviated, the AMA is unwilling to countenance active euthanasia for a person who is in similar straits, but who has the misfortune not to be suffering from an illness that will result in a speedy death.

A similar distinction with respect to infanticide has become a commonplace of medical thinking and practice. If an infant is a mongoloid, or a microcephalic, and happens also to have some other defect requiring corrective surgery if the infant is to live, many doctors and hospitals believe that the parents have the right to decide whether the surgery will be performed, and thus whether the infant will survive. But… it is believed that the parents do not have the right to terminate its life. 1