Study shows that just over half of Americans support assisted suicide

A new Lifeway Research study reveals that a slight majority of Americans believe that it is morally acceptable that people with terminal illnesses request suicide assisted by a doctor, while a greater number believes that doctors should be able to help patients who wish to end their lives.

The study American Views on Assisted Suicide He found that 51% of respondents morally accept that a person with a painful terminal disease seeks the help of a doctor to end his life. A slightly higher percentage, 55%, believes doctors should have legal authorization to help patients requesting help to end their lives.

However, the support is not solid, according to the study: only 1 in 5 Americans said it “totally agrees” that it is morally acceptable that patients ask for help to end their lives, while 30% said they were “agreeing.”

A slightly higher number of Americans surveyed, 1 in 4, believes that doctors should be allowed to help patients to end their lives.

The study also found that 32% considered morally unacceptable suicide assisted by a doctor and 17% expressed their indecision.

Support varies regionally, with greater approval in urban and coastal areas (up to 60% in some places) compared to rural or southern states, where opposition usually coincides with religious values, according to Lifeway. The study, carried out by online panels, included 1,200 adults, with a margin of error of more or less 3.1 percentage points.

Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research, an evangelical Protestant research firm, said: “Half of the Americans seek their own well -being and their own path even in death, but that does not mean that they do not reflect on the morality of suicide assisted by a doctor.”

CNA – Ewtn News English Address also spoke about the survey results with Jessica Rodgers, director of Patients’ Rights Action Fund, a non -partisan group whose purpose is to “abolish the laws on assisted suicide.”

The organization describes these “intrinsically discriminatory laws, impossible to regulate safely and put the most vulnerable members of society at risk of mortal damage.”

Less support, greater opposition

Rodgers declared CNA that the survey figures show a decrease in public support. “Certainly, I don’t see an impulse on his part,” he said.

In fact, A 2016 Lifeway Research Studio He revealed that for 67 % of respondents the practice was morally acceptable, while 33 % disagreed.

Rodgers said that people tend to oppose this practice as they report on how dangerous the policies surrounding the legalization of assisted suicide. He added that “the opposition covers the entire political spectrum.”

In New York, where The state legislature recently approved A bill that legalizes the practice, Governor Kathy Hochul has not yet promulgated the law.

“Daily, various defenders of the entire political spectrum ask him to go,” Rodgers said. “In fact, some of the Democratic leaders have opposed more vehement to the bill.”

Defenders of people with disabilities, health personnel and members of various religious groups have joined in their opposition to the laws, stating that legalizing assisted suicide is harmful to their communities and for patients.

Dying with pain or peace is a false choice

Rodgers said that “defenders often present it erroneously as ‘do you want to die with pain or want a death in peace?'” And he indicated that this practice is actually addressed to people with disabilities.

“It puts our vulnerable neighbors at risk, already measure that people learn more about it, tend to oppose,” he said, remembering that suicide assisted by a doctor is now the fifth main cause of death in Canada.

Oregon legalized suicide assisted by a doctor with the law of death with dignity in 1997. Since then, 11 states and Washington DC already allow practice. Most laws require terminal diagnoses with six months or less of life, mental capacity and the approval of multiple doctors.

Suicide assisted by a doctor consists in the death of the patient carried out by the health professional, therefore, it is different from euthanasia.

Voluntary euthanasia is allowed in a limited number of countries, including Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador and Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain and Portugal. In Belgium and the Netherlands, minors can be subjected to euthanasia if they request it.

What is the position of the Church regarding assisted suicide?

The Catholic Church condemns both assisted suicide and euthanasia, and instead promotes palliative care, which consist of supporting patients with pain management and care as the end of their lives is approaching. In addition, the Church advocates a “special respect” for every person with disabilities or serious illness (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2276).

According to the Catechism, “voluntary euthanasia, whatever their forms and reasons, constitutes a homicide. It is seriously contrary to the dignity of the human person and the respect of the living God, his creator” (CIC, 2324).

Any action or omission that intentionally “causes death to suppress pain, constitutes a homicide seriously contrary to the dignity of the human person and the respect of the living God, its creator” (CIC, 2277).

Catholic teaching also establishes that patients and doctors are not obliged to do everything possible to avoid death, but if a life has reached their natural conclusion and medical intervention would not be beneficial, the decision to “renounce extraordinary or disproportionate means” to keep a dying person alive is not euthanasia, as San Juan Pablo II explained in Life.

Translated and adapted by the ACI Press team. Originally published in CNA.