Pushback against physician-assisted suicide grows, seen as ‘winnable’ issue

Patients’ Rights Action Fund Executive Director Matt Vallière belongs to a broad spectrum of people — secular, religious, left, and right — who share the unifying principle that every person is of equal value and is deserving of equal suicide prevention care. / Credit: Ken Oliver-Méndez/CNA

Napa, California, Jul 29, 2024 / 09:20 am (CNA).

Despite the onslaught of legislative efforts to legalize physician-assisted suicide in many U.S. states, defenders of the disabled and others who oppose the devaluation of vulnerable lives are expressing optimism about the tide beginning to turn in their favor on the issue.

“If we hold back two more states that are still left in play, Massachusetts and Delaware, there will be three years in a row with no new legal states [permitting physician-assisted suicide],” Matt Vallière, executive director of the Patients’ Rights Action Fund, told CNA following a panel on the subject at the 2024 summer conference of the Napa Institute.

Vallière pointed to a number of reasons the tide is turning on the issue, including the growing number of “horror stories” coming out of Canada, where legal assisted suicide, dressed up by the euphemism “medical assistance in dying” (MAID), is rampant. 

The proliferation of people being approved for assisted suicide and euthanasia in Canada due to temporary, solvable problems such as poverty and access to suitable housing, Vallière said, is causing people in general and policymakers in particular to reevaluate their stance on the issue.

“You get people who had a first blush understanding of what they thought they believed about the issue, and they’re thinking twice about whether or not this is good public policy. You’re getting outlets that have historically stonewalled our side’s voice now being concerned about it. They’re publishing pieces on our side of the issue,” Vallière said, referencing an editorial from this year cautioning against legalized assisted suicide by The Chicago Tribune, along with fresh reservations expressed by The Washington Post in view of the developments in Canada.

Such developments now lead Vallière and other opponents of assisted suicide, including his fellow Napa Institute panelists Life Legal Defense Fund CEO Alexandra Snyder and Americans United for Life (AUL) Chief Operating Officer and Corporate Counsel Evangeline Bartz, to express renewed confidence that the issue is a “winnable” one.

As Vallière pointed out during the panel, protecting the lives of the disabled and others who are vulnerable to committing suicide enjoys broad support across party lines. “It’s not a right/left issue where the whole thing has been pigeonholed,” Vallière observed. 

Instead, defenders of those vulnerable to suicide share a “unifying principle that every person is of equal value, and they all deserve equal suicide prevention care and services when they’re in a dark moment.”

Bartz noted that this year assisted suicide bills went down to defeat in various states across the country, including in Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, Tennessee, and Wisconsin.

Instead of only playing defense, Bartz said proactive efforts are also underway in various states. Specifically, AUL advocates the enactment of state laws to establish there is no right to assisted suicide and protect against judicial activism that seeks to decriminalize assisted suicide.

Snyder observed that more often than not, support for assisted suicide is based on a “misunderstanding of what dignity is.” The panelists discussed how interdependence is part of the human condition and needing help with bathing or going to the bathroom, for example, is not by definition a loss of essential human dignity that should cause someone to give up on life.

Hopefully, Vallière concluded, laws permitting assisted suicide will eventually be eliminated because of their core devaluation of and discrimination against people who are living with disabilities. 

The complete Napa Institute panel “Death and Dying: Assisted Suicide and the Most Vulnerable” is scheduled to post on the Institute’s YouTube page by mid-August.