RFI’s Nathan Berkeley was recently interviewed on The Napa Legal Podcast (of Napa Legal Institute) to discuss the intersection of physician assisted suicide and religious liberty. Berkeley argued that the practice is an assault on human dignity and should not be legal in the first place. But when those arguments fail and the practice is permitted in law, the consequent threats to medical conscience rights must be addressed in the strongest possible terms. 

Currently, 11 states and the District of Columbia have legalized physician assisted suicide, with 17 more states introducing bills just this year, as Berkeley noted in a recent article in the National Catholic Register. 

“Unfortunately [the movement] is gaining momentum, and it’s something that continues to grow even to this day, so we look with great scrutiny at some of the religious freedom protections built into these bills and built into the laws that have already been enacted.”

Berkeley pointed to two sources of conscience concerns. First, he highlighted ambiguities in state laws surrounding the transfer or referral of patients who, after being denied, look elsewhere to seek “medical aid in dying” — a euphemism for physician assisted suicide and euthanasia common today. He also commented on the vulnerability of conscientiously objecting medical practitioners employed at private hospitals to adverse employment action on the basis of their refusal. 

Berkeley explained that the dire nature of physician assisted suicide, and the religious and moral grounds of the objections to it, demand the highest level of protection for all medical practitioners and institutions. Unfortunately, current laws and proposed legislation surrounding physician assisted suicide tend to fail in this regard.

Listen to the full interview here and watch below: