In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America. Published daily by senior writers and experts, these in-depth pieces go beyond the headlines to give readers the full picture. You can find our full list of In Focus pieces here.
The turning point in Ari Aster’s chilling horror film Midsommar comes when an elderly man and woman jump off a cliff. The film’s main characters, visiting from America and the United Kingdom, are viscerally horrified to see members of a Swedish cult suddenly commit ritual suicide. While the cult members look on peacefully, their disgusted counterparts are screaming. When one of the jumpers fails to die immediately, things get even uglier.
The scene is based on a mythical Nordic ritual in which the elderly would hurl themselves off cliffs to free up resources for others. It is incredibly uncomfortable to watch, and it rightly chafes our modern Western sensibilities. Letting the elderly kill themselves to avoid burdening others is barbaric. Isn’t it?
Here in America, we wouldn’t dream of pushing our old folks off the edge of El Capitan. But the idea of letting the sick, elderly, and dying speed the process along is not as foreign to our moral imagination as we might like to think. Gallup found in 2024 that a majority of Americans support physician-assisted suicide. “Sixty-six percent of Americans believe doctors should ‘be allowed by law to assist the patient to commit suicide’ for terminal patients living in severe pain who request it,” the pollster reported.
But of course, that’s different from ritual sacrifice, supporters would argue. The distinction, however, is really more one of style than substance. Both situations include people ending their lives for seemingly reasonable or altruistic reasons; the difference lies merely in the visible gore.
Close on the heels of Illinois, New York is set to become the latest state to legalize assisted suicide after Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul announced she will sign a bill passed by the legislature. Hochul cleverly defended her decision on two pillars of American thought: the Judeo-Christian tradition and the vision of the Founders.
“I was taught that God is merciful and compassionate, and so must we be,” she said. “This includes permitting a merciful option to those facing the unimaginable and searching for comfort in their final months in this life.”
In an op-ed, she appealed to our country’s founding principles.
“Two and a half centuries ago, our founding fathers established a vision of a country based on limited government and broad individual rights that together protect rights of speech, worship, privacy and bodily autonomy … In the true spirit of this country, government has a responsibility to protect, not interfere, with an individual’s deeply personal decisions.”
It’s a cold, clever political move. But Hochul, who was raised Catholic, ought to know that the Catholic Church’s official position couldn’t be further from her own.
“Jewish and Christian moral traditions have long rejected the idea of assisting in another’s suicide,” writes the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. “Catholic teaching views suicide as a grave offense against love of self, one that also breaks the bonds of love and solidarity with family, friends, and God.”
As for what the Founders meant when they wrote of “individual rights,” the broad demands of “bodily autonomy” were not included among them. In fact, the Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that the Constitution does not entail a right to assisted suicide. Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote in the majority opinion that “for over 700 years, the Anglo–American common-law tradition has punished or otherwise disapproved of both suicide and assisting suicide.”
This ruling meant that states could outlaw assisted suicide, but it also didn’t prevent them from legalizing it. Twelve states and Washington, D.C., currently allow what proponents like to call “death with dignity.” The euphemism masks an ugly truth: What medical professionals are increasingly able to do is peddle easy, frictionless death.
Medical school graduates are not required to recite the Hippocratic Oath, and that’s a shame. There’s a line in the ancient Greek text that doctors in North America would do well to heed: “I will not give a fatal draught to anyone if I am asked, nor will I suggest any such thing.” Fortunately, despite opposition to it, the American Medical Association’s Code of Ethics has maintained its position that “physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks.”
Doctors in Canada aren’t following any such guidance. Watching our neighbors to the north experiment with assisted suicide should be enough to make every state in the U.S. swear off the practice once and for all. Since 2016, tens of thousands of Canadians have died via the country’s medical assistance in dying program. In 2024 alone, 16,499 people had their lives cut short. This “health service” is open to adults aged 18 and older, but some people in the country are campaigning to expand MAID to include “mature minors.”
This idea is disturbingly popular. As the so-called Dying With Dignity Canada charity claims, “71% of people across Canada support the ability for mature minors to request and be considered for MAID, if all other criteria are met under the law.”
Even older citizens applying for assisted suicide should concern us. Canadian author Robert Munsch, author of beloved children’s books such as Love You Forever, applied and was approved for the program after learning he has dementia. He legally must choose his date of death before he loses his capacity to consent, however, meaning he may spend every day from now on thinking, Is now the time to die? As the New York Times reports it, he fears being a burden to his wife, Ann: “If he misses his chance, he said, turning to Ann, ‘you’re stuck with me being a lump.’”
It’s just this reasoning, the idea that becoming a burden is worse than death, that should give us pause. Especially in America, we value our individualism. But we can’t exist in a society without depending on others.
“We all began utterly dependent, and that should be some encouragement that we are made to love and be loved in that circumstance,” Leah Libresco Sargeant, author of The Dignity of Dependence, told the Atlantic last year.
Political scientist Charles Murray explained just last week that he has changed his mind on assisted suicide.
NEW YORK SLIDES DOWN CANADA’S SLIPPERY ASSISTED SUICIDE SLOPE
“In the intentional universe in which I now believe I live, I am analogous to a heliocentric planet,” he wrote. “I am not the focal point but bound to a larger order. One component of that larger order consists of divine moral absolutes based on unconditional, selfless love — agape.”
Several more states are now considering legalizing assisted suicide, and as the public debates these measures, we ought to remember that the Judeo-Christian principles on which this country was founded leave no room for ambiguity about the practice. It tramples on the dignity of the individual and the community as a whole. There is nothing American about assisted suicide.
