Physician Assisted Suicide vs the Catholic Church

When first deciding to write this topic of physician-assisted suicide, I had slight background knowledge on it due to my own experiences being Catholic and what I’ve heard about it within the Church. Before researching more about it, I had known that Catholics are generally more opposed to terminating life partially because of the Pro-Life stance (life begins at conception) and opposition to Roe v. Wade (legalization of abortion). I had also known about their opposition to assisted suicide when Brittany Maynard, a 29 year old terminally ill woman decided to “die with dignity” through this method and when the physician assisted suicide was put on the Colorado ballot in a recent election.

Relating this topic to the article “It Isn’t Easy to be Catholic” by Leslie Tentler, one can see that the Catholic Church has had a long history of wanting to regulate sex and marriage, including the regulation of contraceptives of married couples. This belief extends the idea that God will grant a person the amount of children that He deems fit and “Will provide, somehow extra for the children He sends” (Tentler, 2004). This piggybacks off the idea that “God holds exclusive authority over the transition from life to death”, or as it’s also called, absolute dominion (Burdette, et. al., 2005). All in all, Catholics generally believe that God holds power over all life (including the regulation of sex and contraceptives) and death. With contraceptives and physician-assisted suicide, this gives people the power to use these powers of God, and Catholics in general don’t believe that is right.

When researching more, I found that reading the article “Religion and Attitudes Toward Physician-Assisted Suicide and Terminal Palliative Care” by Amy Burdette et. al. opened my eyes more to what the general Catholic population believes outside of my knowledge. While it is obvious that “conservative Protestants and Catholics tend to exhibit the greatest opposition” to physician-assisted suicide, some Catholics are also starting to be a bit more progressive in their ideals and morals in relation to their heavily Catholic counterparts because the church cannot regulate “the attitudes and behaviors of individuals” as well as they used to. All of this depends on their upbringing in the Catholic Church (whether or not their families took them to church on a regular basis or if they’re a “seasonal Catholic”) and how much of the teachings they actually stand by and believe (Burdette, et. al., 2005).

Like Catholics, more conservative Protestants are more likely to be anti-physician assisted suicide because they attend church more often, read the Bible more frequently and are more likely to take the Bible literally. Physician assisted suicide to them is almost directly contradicting the Word of God and “challenges” and “questions” God’s power (Burdette, et.al, 2005). Both conservative Protestants and Catholics believe that “God alone is the Lord of life from its beginning until its end: no one can under any circumstance claim from himself the right directly to destroy an innocent human being” (Donum Vitae, V, 1987:9).

In conclusion, though Catholics generally are against physician assisted suicide, much like other conservative Christians, because it “undermines the power of God”, some are more open to the idea because of the lack of restraint the Catholic church has against its members and their beliefs. They are more likely to vote for it depending on their strength in their religious beliefs than conservative Protestants. This war between the Catholics/conservative Protestants and the government/proponents on whether or not to legalize physician assisted suicide is a never ending battle of who’s morals fit into the puzzle of today’s society. Different times and different people will offer up different opinions, thus the battle will continue.

Burdette, Amy M., et al. “Religion and Attitudes Toward Physician‐Assisted Suicide and Terminal Palliative Care.” The Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering, Wiley-Blackwell, 11 Feb. 2005, onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2005.00266.x.

Tentler, Leslie Woodcock. Catholics and Contraception: an American History. Cornell University Press, 2008.