Religious Authority and Public Opinion on the Right to Die

Over the past fifty years, numerous public opinion surveys have indicated growing support for physician.assisted suicide, euthanasia, T ~ r ght-to-die legislation. This pro-euthanasia trend, how-ever, goes against fundamental Jucleo-Christian principles that have traditionaUy been the bulwark against he acceptance of euthanasia. Using Chavess (I994) finition of secularization as the declining scope of religious authority, u,e examine to what extent pe@le are likely to reject raditional sanctions against euthanasia nd approve physician-assisted suicide. We find that the odds of the nonreligious approving physician.assisted suicide are three times greater than the religious; yet, only self-identified evangelical nd liberal Protestants ate significantly different from the nonreli~ous in attitudes tott,ards physician-assisted suicide. We suggest that secularization does not uniformly affect all reli~~ous groups. Although in some traditions, peoples euthanasia attitucles are not congruent with the positions of their religious authorities, in other traditions, most notably evangelicalism, religious authority appears to remain strong. In June 1997, the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled that state governments have the right to outlaw doctor-assisted suicide. TheCourts decision, however, did not silence the divisive national debate between advo-cates and opponents of the right to die. The mass media has directed our attention to Oregonians voting to allow physician-assisted suicide and juries acquitting Dr. Jack Kevorkian of killing terminally ill patients. At the same time, the Denver headquarters of the Hemlock Society, a 25,000 member society that favors doctor-assisted suicide for the terminally ill, was recently stormed by members of the oppositional group Not Dead Yet. Clearly, Americans hold diverse opinions on the right to die. Yet, over the past fifty years, public opinion has moved steadily in favor of the right of the terminally ill to have medical treatment withheld or withdrawn. Numerous public opinion surveys indicate growing support for physician-assisted suicide,