(LifeSiteNews) – The American Medical Association (AMA) has rejected proposals to drop its opposition to physician-assisted suicide, indicating there is at least one line the establishment left-wing health body is not yet willing to cross.
This weekend saw the annual interim meeting of AMA’s House of Delegates to consider an array of proposed policy changes, among them two resolutions that would have had the AMA formally endorse or adopt a position of neutrality on the subject, respectively. Both would have also changed the practice’s terminology from “Physician-Assisted Suicide” to “Medical Aid in Dying.”
Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC), reported that both resolutions were rejected, thanks in part to the “many medical professionals who responded to the alert” sounded by groups like EPC last month “and worked to defeat Resolutions 4 and 5.”
“The take home message is that medical professionals, young physicians and medical students must be involved in the AMA,” Schandenberg says.
As a result, the AMA’s Principles of Medical Ethics will continue to state that “permitting physicians to engage in euthanasia would ultimately cause more harm than good,” because the practice “is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control,” “would pose serious societal risks,” and “could readily be extended to incompetent patients and other vulnerable populations.”
The outcome is an exception to the AMA’s strong left-wing bias on most issues from promoting COVID-19 vaccines and opposing therapeutics like ivermectin to defending abortion-on-demand and the surgical or chemical gender “transitioning” of children.
Ten states plus the District of Columbia currently allow assisted suicide. Federally, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have called for ending euthanasia in the nation’s capital, over which Congress has jurisdiction. Critics say the practice devalues human life, encourages doctors and patients alike not to pursue real medical options, and gives healthcare providers incentives to promote the “option” not because a patient has no alternatives but to reduce their own costs or procure fresh organs.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration has proposed rescinding federal regulations that provide conscience protections for professionals who do not want to engage in “abortion, sterilization, and certain other health services,” “assisted suicide, euthanasia, or mercy killing,” and for “managed care organizations with moral or religious objections to counseling or referral for certain services.”
The Suicide Prevention Lifeline in the United States can be reached by dialing 988.