Watchdog effort launches to oppose assisted suicide in U.S.

CNA Staff, Mar 28, 2025 / 16:15 pm (CNA).

A new watchdog effort has launched to monitor and oppose the expansion of assisted suicide throughout the United States. 

Aging with Dignity, a nonprofit group inspired by St. Teresa of Calcutta that provides guidance on end-of-life issues, on Thursday debuted Assisted Suicide Watch, which the group said will “challenge the well-funded effort to convince people that suicide-affirming care is a social good.”

Jim Towey, the founder and CEO of Aging with Dignity, previously served as legal counsel to Mother Teresa. He told CNA last year that he launched the nonprofit “to give people a hopeful vision for end of life that helps them practice their faith and that doesn’t treat dying like it’s just a medical moment.”

The organization has widely distributed its “Five Wishes” legal document, an advance directive that helps Catholics and others establish their wishes for care ahead of a serious illness. Last year it rolled out a new resource, “Finishing Life Faithfully,” a booklet that helps Catholics address end-of-life decisions in line with Church teaching. 

Assisted Suicide Watch, meanwhile, is meant to research and analyze “the consequences of suicide-affirming care,” the organization says.

“If we adopt suicide as a social norm, then we remove any motivation to try and correct the increasing rate of suicide in the country because it is no longer a problem worth fixing but rather a ‘solution’ worth celebrating and promoting,” the initiative points out. 

The new watchdog effort is already tracking the growing rate at which assisted suicide is claiming lives in the U.S. It says more than 2,300 Americans died from the practice in 2023, while more than 1,000 lethal prescriptions remain unaccounted for in the country.

Aging with Dignity said the watchdog will “track, expose, and oppose state and national efforts to expand physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia.”

Towey in a press release said the group “fully support[s] patient self-determination.” But, he said, “killing yourself or forcing doctors to participate is not the answer” because “it cheapens human dignity.”

“Physicians are healers, not executioners,” he said. “People need genuine compassion and choices, not the false choice of pain or poison.”

In addition to the United States, assisted suicide has been on the upswing in other parts of the world, including in Canada, where the country’s national “medical aid in dying” program accounted for nearly 1 in 20 deaths in the country in 2023.

Aging with Dignity said assisted suicide is the fifth-leading cause of death in Canada, with more than 96% of suicide requests granted. 

The group said that in order to counter assisted suicide it promotes “best practices in palliative care,” including pain management, timely hospital services, and spiritual and emotional support.

“If America’s health care system routinely offered such humane services,” Towey said, “public support for the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide would nearly vanish.”

Source: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/263039/watchdog-effort-launches-to-oppose-assisted-suicide-in-us