In a disturbing trend that must be challenged, Representative Riley M. Moore (R-WV) has introduced an amendment calling on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to investigate reports that some doctors may be prescribing assisted suicide to individuals suffering from eating disorders such as anorexia. The House Appropriations Committee has passed this amendment, citing concern over “the potential practice of referring, counselling, prescribing, or administering assisted suicide to individuals suffering from chronic mental-health conditions, including anorexia and other eating disorders.”
This practice is nothing short of a moral tragedy. When someone with an eating disorder is encouraged toward assisted death, we betray both the sanctity of that human life and the duty of medical professionals to heal and to protect. Suicide, assisted or otherwise, is not healthcare. It offers despair when hope and healing are what are needed. Rep. Moore rightly argues that “these patients need sustenance, not suicide.”
Medical ethics and the biblical tradition both affirm that the purpose of medicine is to alleviate suffering, not to cut lives short. The American Medical Association has reaffirmed that physician-assisted suicide is “fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer.” We should view with horror and resolve any attempt to normalise assisted suicide for people whose lives are already compromised by mental illness. Reducing human life to a condition of suffering is a dangerous slippery slope, that threatens us all, but especially those who are vulnerable.
SPUC believes deeply in offering compassionate, life-affirming support to those suffering from eating disorders. That means providing psychological care, nutritional rehabilitation, compassionate pastoral and community support, not suicidal options. Effective interventions exist: therapy, family support, medical oversight, spiritual care. To shrug at the opportunity to heal is to reject both society’s moral responsibility and the dignity of the individual.
As this amendment moves forward, we urge all public officials, healthcare providers, families, and citizens to stand firmly against any practice that counsels, prescribes, or administers assisted suicide for persons suffering mental illness, including eating disorders. Let us insist that no patient be abandoned to despair. Let us insist that healthcare restore life, foster hope, and protect the weakest among us.
Life is always worth fighting for, and always worth protecting.
