Multiple choice

Select the phrase that most appropriately completes the text in blank (7).

Directions: The blank in the following paragraph mark deletions from the text. For the question, select the phrase that most appropriately completes the text.

Libertarians argue that laws making suicide a criminal act are both foolish and an unwarranted intrusion on individual conscience. With regard to the first, they point out that there is no penalty which the law can assess which inflicts greater injury than the crime itself. As for the second, they argue that it is no business of the state to prevent suicide, for whether it is right for a person to inflict fatal injury on himself as opposed to others is a matter between him and his God, one in which the state, by the terms of the Constitution, may not interfere. Such arguments, however, seem to me to be ill-conceived. In the first place, the libertarian makes the mistaken assumption that deference is the only goal of the law. I maintain that the laws we have proscribing suicide are ___(7)___.

By making it a crime to take any life even one's own we make a public announcement of our shared conviction that each person is unique and valuable. In the second place, while it must be conceded that the doctrine of the separation of church and state is a useful one, it need not be admitted that suicide is a crime ___(8)___,. And here we need not have recourse to the possibility that a potential suicide might, if given the opportunity, repent of his decision. Suicide inflicts a cost upon us all: the emotional cost on those close to the suicide; an economic cost in the form of a loss of production of a mature and trained member of the society which falls on us all; and a cost to humanity at large for the loss of a member of our community.

  1. drafted to make it more difficult to commit suicide

  2. passed by legislators in response to pressures by religious lobbying groups

  3. written in an effort to protect our democratic liberties, not undermine them

  4. important because they educate all to the value of human life

  5. outdated because they belong to a time when church and state were not
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
D Correct answer
Explanation

The author is attempting to argue that laws against suicide are legitimate. He argues against a simplistic libertarian position that says suicide hurts only the victim. The goal of the law, he argues, is not just to protect the victim from himself. A society passes such a law because it wants to underscore the importance of human life.

Keep practicing — related questions