Assisted Suicide Legislation and Catholic Social Teaching

This episode is about growing support for the legalization of assisted suicide, both in the United States and worldwide, and what Catholic Social Teaching has to say about this news story.  

Here are references and additional resources.

1. 2025 Saw Expanded Access to Physician-Assisted Suicide.  National Catholic Register article 12/29/2025
2. Catholic bishops speak out as New York governor pledges to sign into law assisted suicide  EWTN article 12/17/2025
3. Most Americans Favor Legal Euthanasia  Gallup polling article 8/8/2024
4. American support for euthanasia based on ‘false dichotomy,’ Catholic researcher says 8/13/2024 article in response to Gallup poll article referenced above
5. Medical Aid In Dying Is Not Assisted Suicide, Suicide or Euthanasia  Online article from a proponent of “Medical Aid in Dying” that objects to the term “Assisted Suicide”
6. Oregon Death With Dignity 2024 Annual Report
7. Catechism of the Catholic Church – scroll down to sections 2276-2283
8. Samaritanus Bonus (Good Samaritan) letter issued in 2020 by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, on the care of persons in the critical and terminal phases of life. 
9. It’s Not Your Life, It’s Not Your Death, It’s Not Your Choice - Bishop Robert Barron article January 4, 2024
10. Is Canada ‘Killing Itself’ With Doctor-Assisted Suicide?  September 2025 summary article in Religion Unplugged (no subscription required) and full article in The Atlantic (subscription required)
11. Podcast website with full transcripts for this episode and all other episodes

Transcript

Welcome to “Headline News and Catholic Social Teaching,” where we take a brief look at stories in the news, not from a left or right political perspective, but through the lens of Catholic Social Teaching.  I’m your host, Tom Mulhern, and my hope is that this podcast will help us grow in our love of God and love of our neighbors.  

This episode is about the growing number of places in the United States and around the world that have legalized physician-assisted suicide, also known as physician-assisted dying, and what Catholic teaching has to say about this issue and this trend.  

Here’s the news story.  In 2025, Delaware and Illinois legalized assisted suicide, joining 9 other states and the District of Columbia which already allow the procedure.  New York State is poised to join this group in early 2026, where the Governor has said she will sign the assisted suicide bill that came out of the state legislature at the end of 2025.  On the international level, France, the United Kingdom and Uruguay all took steps toward approving assisted suicide or euthanasia in 2025, joining a list of countries that includes Canada, Colombia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Spain, New Zealand, and parts of Australia.

Although there are some variations, the basic requirements to qualify for assisted suicide in the states that have approved it are that you have to be an adult who is mentally capable of making your own decisions, you must have a terminal illness with a prognosis of 6 months or less to live, and you have to be able to take the lethal drugs without assistance.

Let me try to clarify the terminology a bit.  “Assisted Suicide” or “Assisted Dying” is when a physician (or other authorized health professional) gives me lethal drugs and I take them myself.  “Euthanasia” is when I give my permission to a physician (or other authorized health professional) to inject me with lethal drugs.  At this time, euthanasia is against the law in all 50 states, but forms of euthanasia are legal in Canada, the Netherlands and a few other places.

Also, I want to note that those in favor of Assisted Suicide strongly prefer to call it Assisted Dying.  The enabling legislation in states that have approved the procedure take pains to state that, because of the conditions that have to be met, taking your own life in this manner is different from regular suicide.  Among other things, this legal characterization seems to be aimed at reducing liability concerns for the participating health care professionals, and it also enables the heirs of the deceased to collect life insurance payouts which would otherwise be voided by suicide.

The Catholic sources that I will draw on in this episode use the term assisted suicide, as do many media articles on the topic, and so that is the term I will use.  I’ll put a link in the notes to an article by a group in favor of calling it assisted dying, if you’re interested in learning more about that perspective.

OK, before getting into Catholic Teaching on this topic, I want to share some survey data on the stated reasons why people choose to end their life by means of assisted suicide.  Oregon, where I currently live, was the first state to legalize what it calls “Death With Dignity,” and the state produces an annual statistical report on utilization.  As part of that report, every year they ask people receiving an end-of-life prescription to indicate their reasons for making this choice.

The three most frequently reported end-of-life concerns in 2024 were loss of autonomy (89% of respondents), decreasing ability to participate in activities that made life enjoyable (88%), and loss of dignity (64%).  Apparently, these have been the most frequently reported concerns for many years running, and they are indeed real concerns that I think we can all relate to.  None of us want to lose our autonomy or our ability to participate in enjoyable activities, nor do we want to lose our dignity.  

But is assisted suicide the right response to these very real concerns?  Catholic teaching says no, that taking one's own life is not a morally acceptable response to our end of life concerns.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church clearly states that both suicide and euthanasia are morally unacceptable.  Here’s a quote from the Catechism: “We are stewards, not owners, of the life God has entrusted to us.  It is not ours to dispose of.”

In other words, my life is a gift from God, and the timing of my death is not a matter of my personal choice.

I’ll put a link in the notes to the relevant sections of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  I’ll also put a link to a letter issued in 2020 by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith entitled “Samaritanus Bonus,” or Good Samaritan, on the care of persons in the critical and terminal phases of life.  This document was issued in response to the growing use of assisted suicide and euthanasia, in order to clarify Church teaching and provide pastoral guidelines. 

Now it’s important to note that the church does allow refusing “overzealous” treatments that prolong suffering in the face of unavoidable death. An example would be mechanical ventilation for someone with a terminal condition who will never regain the ability to breathe on their own.  Refusing such disproportionate treatment is permissible because it is not intended to kill the patient, it is merely allowing natural death to occur.  Death is the result of the disease or the underlying condition, not the result of a method that actively ends the patient’s life.  This is in contrast to assisted suicide and euthanasia, which are designed and intended to actively cause death.

Church teaching calls for compassionate care, palliative treatment and spiritual support for those near death.  As such, the person near death should, when possible, continue to receive nutrition and hydration as part of normal care, even when refusing disproportionate treatment.  Palliative care, often provided through a hospice program, is a holistic approach aimed at managing pain and providing various kinds of support to help the person live out their days in dignity and relative comfort. 

Supporting assisted suicide by calling it “death with dignity” seems to imply that you’ve basically got two choices, death with dignity (that is, assisted suicide) or death without dignity (that is, natural death).  In an article I’ll provide in the notes, Dr. Scott French, a Catholic emergency physician and researcher, calls this a false dichotomy.

“As an emergency physician I have witnessed firsthand the vastly improved treatment of end-of-life pain as well as chronic pain and rare pain syndromes,” he said.

There have been “great strides” in hospice and palliative care as well as a “significant increase” in safe and effective pain relief medications, according to French. Because of this, he said that it is rare for a patient to receive inadequate pain treatment at the end of life.

Church teaching on assisted suicide and euthanasia are based on the inherent dignity of each human life, a dignity which is still present even if I lose much of my ability to do things for myself.  Depending on others for our care is not something that any of us desire, but being in that state does not diminish in any way our inherent dignity as human persons and children of God.

Another very real concern with the legalization of assisted suicide is the so-called slippery slope.  In other words, it starts out with strict conditions for when and how it can be used, but over time those conditions are loosened so that more people can take their lives or have their lives taken.  There is clear evidence that this is indeed happening.  

Consider Canada.  When Canada passed it’s Medical Assistance in Dying law in 2016, it included both assisted suicide and euthanasia, but limited it to cases of “intolerable suffering” of “gravely ill patients” at “the end of life” when death is “reasonably foreseeable.”  But then in 2021, Canada expanded the availability of assisted suicide and euthanasia to those afflicted with “serious medical conditions but not facing death.” At the same time, Canada dropped what had been a required 10-day waiting period between requesting death and carrying it out.  And looking forward, Canada has already approved an expansion of its Medical Assistance in Dying coverage that will go into effect in 2027, to include people with mental illness alone – no pain or physical disability needed.

OK, let me wrap things up. 

Given the worldwide trend toward growing legal acceptance of assisted suicide and euthanasia, this issue poses a significant challenge to Church teaching and Church institutions, particularly Catholic healthcare providers and organizations.  It will take both compassion and courage for those of us trying to live our lives according to Church teaching to consistently witness and communicate what it means to have a culture of life in the face of the expanding culture of death.  

And this is not an abstract or theoretical issue for any of us.  Many of us will have the opportunity to show real compassion and practical support to someone we love as they near death, and every one of us will someday choose how we approach our own death.

Hopefully, we will remember that Church teaching is focused on our true and lasting happiness, on living and dying in harmony with God’s plan, not our plan, so that we can experience eternal happiness.  That is the “pearl of great price” that we should be focused on throughout our lives, and particularly as we approach the moment when we will stand before God.

Well, on that sobering note, I’ll wrap up this episode of “Headline News and Catholic Social Teaching.”  If you found it worthwhile, I invite you to share it with others.  If you want to learn more about me or the podcast, I encourage you to listen to Episode 1 Introduction or visit the podcast website.

And I hope that, in some small way, this episode might help us live our lives guided by the Holy Spirit through the teachings of the Church.  

Thank you for listening.