Physician-assisted suicide is expanding rapidly across the United States as more states pass laws that legalize the practice for terminally ill patients. As Christians, we know that every person is made in God’s image (Gen. 1:27), and thus their life has inestimable value and should be accorded the highest dignity. As Southern Baptists, we have insisted that this includes the elderly, the disabled, and the terminally ill. For decades, we have confessed that it is our God-given responsibility to “contend for the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death (BF&M, Art. 15).”
Opposing the expansion of physician-assisted suicide is simply the next battle in the fight for the sanctity of human life. To that end, the ERLC recently joined an amicus, or “friend of the court,” brief submitted to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Curran v. Governor of Delaware. The brief argues that Delaware’s law must be struck down because it violates the Constitution and basic principles of human dignity.
Opposing the expansion of physician-assisted suicide is simply the next battle in the fight for the sanctity of human life.
What is Delaware’s physician-assisted suicide law?
In May 2025, Delaware became the 11th state (12th jurisdiction) in the country to legalize physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients after enacting the End of Life Options Act (EOLOA). The EOLOA allows patients to request life-ending prescriptions from their doctors and self-administer those drugs to take their life. To qualify, a patient has to be at least 18 years old, a resident of Delaware, deemed mentally competent, and must receive a prognosis of less than six months to live from a doctor. Furthermore, the patient must:
- Receive the same prognosis by two different healthcare providers,
- Make a written request to their doctor about seeking physician-assisted suicide, and
- Make two oral requests at least 15 days apart.
While these parameters attempt to protect Delawareans from coercion, there remain serious problems in physician-assisted suicide, including disparate impacts on people with disabilities and other terminal illnesses.
What is the case opposing Delaware’s physician-assisted suicide law?
On Dec. 8, 2025, Sean Curran, an individual with disabilities, joined by Freedom Center for Independent Living, United Spinal Association, National Council on Independent Living, Not Dead Yet, Delaware ADAPT, and Institute for Patients’ Rights, filed a lawsuit against Gov. Matthew Meyer and other leading health figures in Delaware.
Curran v. Governor of Delaware centers on the EOLOA’s discriminatory bias and articulates that the law imposes barriers for individuals with disabilities and other vulnerable people by denying them their rights to due process and federal disability protections. Curran, a quadriplegic, argues that the law offers him suicide aid, not prevention. The plaintiffs further allege the law puts the healthcare system and insurance companies in the position to attempt to quantify disabled patients’ quality of life and subjectively offer services accordingly, often devaluing them and denying them access to care options.
At the end of December, the district court in Delaware threw out the case, arguing that physician-assisted suicide is entirely voluntary and the EOLOA contains sufficient safeguards to ensure it is only administered to eligible patients. The plaintiffs quickly appealed the dismissal to the Third Circuit.
How is the ERLC opposing Delaware’s physician-assisted suicide law?
On Feb. 27, the ERLC joined an amicus brief filed with the Third Circuit Court of Appeals outlining why the EOLOA violates the due process rights of patients. In other words, through this law, the government infringes on their rights to “life, liberty, and property.”
In short, the brief argues that the EOLOA violates the constitutional right to life, something the government should be protecting. Instead, it infringes on that right, giving doctors permission to enable patients to commit suicide. Additionally, the brief argues that EOLOA violates substantive 1States can only infringe upon fundamental rights “if the infringement is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest.” Delaware has no legitimate interest in helping people take their own life, nor is the EOLOA narrowly tailored.
and procedural due process. 2The court must consider (1) private interests, (2) government interests, and (3) the value of procedural requirements in determining what process is due. Addressing the first two categories, the private individual’s desire to die does not supersede the government’s compelling interest to protect life, as established in Glucksburg. Related to procedural requirements, the “safeguards” in the EOLOA are insufficient to protect vulnerable individuals from harm and deny them their fundamental rights, nor could any amount of safeguards justify the government legalizing this deadly practice.
What is the legal landscape for physician-assisted suicide?
Physician-assisted suicide was first legalized in the state of Oregon in 1994. Three years later, in 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Washington v. Glucksburg (and companion case Vacco v. Quill) that a state ban on physician-assisted suicide does not violate a mentally compentent terminal patient’s right to due process. In the unanimous decision, the court said that the right to physician-assisted suicide is not a fundamental liberty protected by the Constitution and that its practice is offensive to our national traditions. Washington’s ban, according to the court, was rationally related to the state’s legitimate interest in protecting medical ethics, shielding disabled and terminally ill individuals from prejudice, and protecting human life.
However, despite these clearly stated legitimate interests, the court has left the ability to legalize the practice up to each individual state and has never struck down a state law that permits doctors to prescribe life-ending drugs.
Physician-assisted suicide is now legal in 14 jurisdictions nationwide: Oregon, Washington, Montana, Vermont, California, Colorado, Washington, D.C., Hawaii, New Jersey, Maine, New Mexico, Delaware, Illinois, and New York. Sadly, physician-assisted suicide is gaining traction. The last three states have all legalized physician-assisted suicide since 2025, a dramatic rate of increase since the first state legalized it in 1994.
What is the problem with physician-assisted suicide?
In an opinion piece for Christian Post, ERLC Senior Policy Manager Katy Roberts outlines the serious ethical pitfalls of physician-assisted suicide. Roberts explains, “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.”
“In physician-assisted suicide, healthcare providers, the very people sworn by oath to bring treatment and care, become directly complicit in patient self-murder.”
Katy Roberts, ERLC senior policy manager
Notably, the American Medical Association (AMA) opposes physician-assisted suicide because it is incompatible with the doctor’s role as healer. Indeed, doctors take an oath to “do no harm,” yet what greater harm is there in the practice of medicine than to facilitate the untimely death of a patient.
Southern Baptists have long opposed the legalization of this harmful medical practice, passing a resolution in 1992 rejecting “as appropriate any action which, of itself or by intention, causes a person’s death,” including through “euthanasia or assisted suicide.”
What’s next for physician-assisted suicide in Delaware?
The case is in the beginning of the appeals process and currently sits before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. A decision from this court could come sometime in 2026. From there, it would be returned to the district court or appealed to the Supreme Court.
