WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans’ current views on the legality of euthanasia, a procedure in which a physician intentionally acts to end the life of a patient, are similar to what they have been during the past decade. Just over seven in 10 Americans, 71%, believe doctors should be “allowed by law to end the patient’s life by some painless means if the patient and his or her family request it.”
At the same time, doctor-assisted suicide -- a term used to describe patients ending their own lives with the aid of a physician -- garners slightly less but still majority support. 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.
Although both readings are consistent with support over the past decade, slightly fewer Americans between 1996 and 2014 thought doctor-assisted suicide should be legal. During that time, an average of 58% of Americans were in favor, compared with an average of 65% since 2014. Support for doctor-assisted suicide has risen from the trend low of 51% just in the past decade, while support for euthanasia has varied only modestly over the past three decades.
Gallup first asked about doctor-assisted suicide in 1996 but has asked about doctors ending a patient’s life through painless means since 1947. In that earliest poll, 37% of Americans were in support, with the record low of 36% recorded three years later in 1950. When Gallup next polled on the issue in 1973, 53% of Americans were in favor, after which stronger majorities have remained in agreement.
Most U.S. subgroups are somewhat more inclined to support doctors ending patients’ lives through painless means than to agree with doctors assisting patients in dying by suicide. Among the exceptions are Democrats and women, who are about equally likely to say both euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide should be legal. Democrats (79%) are more likely than Republicans (61%) or independents (72%) to favor legal euthanasia.
Slim Majority Views Doctor-Assisted Suicide as Moral
Separately, Gallup tracks Americans’ views on the morality of doctor-assisted suicide as part of a larger list of social issues. Gallup has not asked about the morality of legalized euthanasia.
Americans’ feelings on the morality of doctor-assisted suicide are more mixed than their views on its legality, with a slim majority (53%) agreeing that the procedure is morally acceptable and 40% calling it morally wrong. More than half of Americans have considered doctor-assisted suicide as morally acceptable since 2014, whereas from 2001 to 2013, this sentiment was generally at or below 50%.
Religiosity has the most significant impact on one’s perceptions of morality regarding this question. Sixty-seven percent of those who seldom or never attend religious services say doctor-assisted suicide is morally acceptable, compared with 29% of those who attend services weekly; 66% of the most religious Americans believe doctor-assisted suicide is morally wrong.
Consistent with their opposition to doctor-assisted suicide, dedicated religious service attendees tend to maintain conservative views on a range of moral issues related to human life, such as viewing abortion (69%), stem-cell research with human embryos (52%) and destroying human embryos created by IVF (54%) as morally wrong. However, the majority (55%) view the death penalty as morally acceptable.
Adults who do not have a religious affiliation or who do not identify with a specific faith (77%), Democrats (69%), and college graduates (67%) are the most inclined to believe that doctor-assisted suicide is morally acceptable. By contrast, along with weekly churchgoers, Republicans (38%) and adults with no college education (41%) are among the subgroups of Americans least likely to hold this view.
Notably, Americans in regions allowing doctor-assisted suicide are also among the most likely to say it is moral. Sixty-six percent of residents in the West and 57% of Americans in the East say doctor-assisted suicide is morally acceptable. All states currently offering end-of-life options are in these regions, with the majority in the West. No states in the South offer doctor-assisted suicide, and only 39% of residents of that region say it’s a morally acceptable procedure. An outlier is the Midwest, in which 60% of residents say doctor-assisted suicide is moral, although no Midwestern states allow the procedure.
Bottom Line
Americans offer majority support for end-of-life options for terminal patients that involve human intervention, but they are slightly more likely to agree with euthanasia procedures over doctor-assisted suicide. Doctor-assisted suicide consistently receives slightly lower support, likely because “suicide” carries social and religious stigma. This is also reflected in the finding that only 22% of Americans believe suicide is morally acceptable.
At the same time, the public is more evenly divided on the morality of doctor-assisted suicide. This parallels Gallup’s finding that Americans increasingly embrace individual choice-making while still holding negative judgments about the state of U.S. morality.
Doctor-assisted suicide is legal in 11 U.S. jurisdictions under stringent requirements. No states currently allow euthanasia, but physicians are ethically allowed to withdraw life-sustaining treatment for a terminal patient should current interventions not facilitate the patient’s quality of life. With most Americans in support of euthanasia, this makes end-of-life options a complicated concern in legal and medical communities and raises a myriad of questions regarding medical ethics for lawmakers.
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