Today, Dr. Evan Lenow filed a public comment letter in response to a federal request for information (RFI) regarding hospice care and physician-assisted suicide. In the comments submitted on behalf of the ERLC, Lenow articulates Southern Baptists’ stark opposition to physician-assisted suicide, clarifies the ethical issues with the practice, and calls for Medicare regulations that prevent the subversion of federal law in states where PAS is legal.
The letter outlines that:
- Southern Baptists are opposed to the practice of physician-assisted suicide (PAS), an unacceptable breach of medical ethics which violates of the sanctity of human life.
- Most of the terminology (“MAiD,” “death with dignity,” “euthanasia,” and “mercy killing”) used to describe physician-assisted suicide is culturally misleading and statutorily inaccurate, and therefore, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) should avoid their use.
- CMS should implement reporting and regulatory safeguards for hospice programs to ensure that no Medicare dollars are funding PAS-related services, either directly or indirectly, in states where the practice is legal.
What have Southern Baptists said about physician-assisted suicide?
Southern Baptists have spoken in opposition to PAS in a 1996 resolution, resolving that we,
“[Affirm] the biblical and Hippocratic prohibitions against assisted suicide … commend and encourage medical science in its efforts to improve pain management techniques … [and] call upon physicians, nurses, hospice workers, individual Christians and local churches to make emotional, psychological, and spiritual care of suffering patients a priority, thereby relieving the sense of isolation and abandonment some dying patients feel.”
Additionally, the Baptist Faith & Message 2000, the SBC’s confession of faith, rightly acknowledges that “the sacredness of human personality is evident in that God created man in His own image, and in that Christ died for man; therefore, every person of every race possesses full dignity and is worthy of respect and Christian love.” Our faith compels us to “contend for the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death.”
Medicalized killing does not respect the sanctity of human life and physician-assisted suicide is not dignifying to human beings made in God’s image.
