Currently, physician-assisted suicide is legal in California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.

No court, federal or state, has ruled physician-assisted suicide to be a constitutional right. In fact, in Washington v. Glucksberg the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the argument that physician-assisted suicide is a fundamental right under the Constitution, saying that the government has an “unqualified interest in the preservation of human life.”

Yes. The evidence from European countries and U.S. states that have legalized it shows physician-assisted suicide uniquely disadvantages the terminally ill, the chronically sick, the disabled, the poor, and the depressed. Everyone else in our society is the beneficiary of robust suicide-prevention efforts, yet these vulnerable groups are discriminatorily subjected to offers of death instead.

Physician-assisted suicide is also easily used to convince and pressure vulnerable people to end their lives prematurely, despite the fact that there are viable medical options to treat pain which enable those with terminal diagnoses to live lives with dignity. Supposed safeguards never turn out to be effective in the real world. So, what is promoted as voluntary often turns out to be anything but. The terminally sick are often pressured into assisted suicide to keep from being a burden on their family or society.

It also compromises the medical profession, turning the Hippocratic Oath on its head and forcing doctors to participate in their patient’s suicide.

There certainly are. In fact, we have never had better care and alternatives for those who are ill, even for patients with terminal diagnoses. Palliative care, for example, has seen considerable improvements in this last decade alone, to the point that pain management is possible for the vast majority of patients.

Additionally, treatment for mental illness and depression has greatly improved, as has support for those with disabilities. Not to mention that terminal diagnoses are often wildly inaccurate in the first place. It is not uncommon for patients to outlive these diagnoses by years or even decades.

Studies show that most people don’t turn to suicide because of unbearable pain that cannot be managed. Instead, they do so because they fear that they will no longer be able to live independent lives. In fact, many medical conditions invoked for physician-assisted suicide are not terminal at all.