Shamefully, 'most permissive' physician-assisted suicide in US is coming
When it comes to the sanctity of life, Christians often rightly emphasize saving preborn lives from all forms of abortion. This focus has spurred monumental victories for the cause of life in recent years: the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the repeal of harmful federal regulations, and, for the first time ever, federally defunding Planned Parenthood.
While advocates have worked faithfully toward these milestones, a culture of death has quietly and steadily gained ground under the guise of “healthcare”: the promulgation of physician-assisted suicide. In a culture that promotes elective death in the form of abortion, this is no surprise.
Physician-assisted suicide in America
On Dec. 17, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul publicly committed to sign legislation permitting physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients — a bill that is shamefully called “the most permissive assisted suicide bill in the country.” Her signature is expected by midnight tonight and will make New York the 14th U.S. jurisdiction to legalize the practice.
Not including New York, three states in the last nine months have signed right-to-die legislation — a pace unprecedented in U.S. history, with no signs of slowing down. In 2026, legislation will be seriously considered in Virginia, Maryland, and Massachusetts, while other states are quickly gaining ground.
The problem of physician-assisted suicide
These developments in our country should lead us to ask what physician-assisted suicide is and why it is so problematic.
Physician-assisted suicide (PAS) is a precise form of medicalized killing aided by doctors and pharmacists, carried out by the patient. Other monikers include “death with dignity” and “right to die” legislation. These names sound comforting but are tragically misinformed. While the term “physician-assisted suicide” is often enveloped in language of “compassion” and “mercy,” there is no getting around it: In PAS, healthcare providers, the very people sworn by oath to bring treatment and care, become directly complicit in patient self-murder.
While the harms of PAS are likely evident to the Christian, even the secular eye can see that assisted suicide fails to heal and dignify. The American Medical Association’s Code of Medical Ethics writes, “Physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks.”
Avoidance of suffering, worship of autonomy
So why are states increasingly welcoming the practice of assisted death?
As much as culture is shaped by certain policies, policies are a reflection of culture. Abortion and physician-assisted suicide are undergirded by the same moral pitfalls: a worship of self that exalts autonomy, and an avoidance of suffering.
Our world does not know what to do with suffering — how to endure it ourselves, let alone how to bear with another in the midst of it. And though Christians have the indwelling Spirit, the hope of Christ, and assurance of God’s Word, we do not fare much better in our frameworks. We, too, incorrectly define “mercy” and overvalue autonomy in reckoning with earthly suffering, often looking more to culture than to Scripture in our constructs about life and death.
Death and suffering are not ends to be avoided, nor can they actually be avoided. They are horrid consequences of the Fall that, one day, will afflict us all. This is precisely why we need the hope and the power of the Gospel, which frees us from the present pain of earthly death that plagues all humanity (Heb. 2:15).
A better way to approach suffering
Tomorrow’s bright hope does not remove today’s pain. But this hope should spur us to walk alongside people in the midst of their anguish, helping them carry the burdens of a sin-wrecked world (Gal. 6:2). While we cannot avoid suffering, it is right and honorable to seek to diminish it by offering truly dignifying alternatives as we care for the afflicted.
As Christians, we must do all of this while trusting in God’s sovereignty over our present pain and future fate. We need not fear suffering, nor forget that, in Christ, death has lost its sting.
Death is not our hope or deliverance
Physician-assisted suicide cannot deliver what it promises: dignity, escape from suffering, or “freedom” through early death. Death never leads to life — unless we are dying to sin and self (Gal. 2:20; 1 Pet. 3:24).
Death is painful and evil. But avoiding death is not the goal of the Christian life. We should not pretend that it is or promote systems that claim this. Faithful Christians may even have moments of longing for death — Paul certainly did (Phil. 1:21). But this desire should be rightly ordered, stemming from the desire to be with Christ and “for the former things to pass away” as we long for the second coming of our Savior — when he ushers in a new Heaven and Earth, where there will be no more mourning or pain.
Katy Roberts is the senior policy manager of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. She worked on Capitol Hill as a health policy staffer, and in a prior life, worked in clinical healthcare. She graduated from Texas A&M University and Georgetown University and now lives in Washington, D.C., where she is involved in her local church. Katy is pursuing her master's degree in Christian Ethics at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.
