Who Should Decide How You Die?

The Anti-Choice Movement Takes Aim At Death with Dignity Laws

Photo by Anton Darius on Unsplash

With a huge victory in the Supreme Court and the wind at its back, the anti-abortion movement (or really, movements) in the US is plotting where to go next. The list is pretty long. In addition to pushing state abortion bans, they’re also making existing bans even stricter — stripping out exceptions for the pregnant woman’s health, for rape, for incest, and for serious fetal anomaly. Eventually, they will almost surely try to strip out exceptions for the pregnant woman’s life, given that a big anti-abortion talking point is that abortion is never necessary to save a woman’s life (this, doctors say, is entirely false).

They’re coming for contraception. They’re coming for IVF and fertility treatments. They’re coming for LGBT rights.

But they’re also coming for death.

I try to keep a close-ish eye on right-wing media. I follow a lot of conservatives on Twitter, and I read conservative publications. It’s useful both to understand what the other side is saying, but also what they’re prioritizing and discussing that isn’t yet on the radar of the general public. And one topic that has been cropping up quite a bit over the past few weeks is physician-assisted dying.

Stories about physician-assisted dying have been on Fox News. They’ve been in the National Review. Conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote about the topic in his newsletter.

What’s going on?