Activist Doctors Fight To Legalize Assisted Suicide In Massachusetts

Two doctors are suing Massachusetts in an attempt to legalize assisted suicide, according to the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).

Roger Kligler and Alan Steinbach want the state to end the practice of criminally charging doctors who prescribe lethal medication to consenting adult patients with terminal illnesses, according to the ADF.

The ADF is defending the Massachusetts law prohibiting assisted suicide as an appeals court considers the doctors’ challenges. The group filed a brief with the court on behalf of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition USA to preserve what it called a “well settled” distinction between “withdrawing or refusing life-sustaining treatment” and “attempting suicide.”

The doctors argued in the case that the court’s prior determination to apply involuntary manslaughter law to euthenasia was incorrect because “the prescribing doctor does not cause the patient’s death and the prescribing doctor’s conduct is not wanton or reckless.”

“Every human life—regardless of disability or illness—is of great value, and the government must do all it can to preserve life, especially for the most vulnerable who cannot advocate for themselves,” ADF Senior Counsel Kevin Theriot said in a press release.

“There is no constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide in Massachusetts or any other state, and we hope the court will uphold the commonwealth’s longstanding history and tradition of prohibiting this perversion of a physician’s oath and duty to ‘do no harm,’” Theriot said.