The District of Columbia is one step away from becoming the seventh jurisdiction in the country to pass a medically assisted suicide measure.
Despite growing acceptance of medically assisted suicide, a group representing more than 1,000 Orthodox rabbis came out against the practice, calling it “murder.”
In a recent statement, the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) said it “vehemently protests legalizing any pathway for killing the ill, since society thereby supports and normalizes the act of murder.”
In addition, the organization called “for legislators and medical care professionals to reject or limit physician-assisted death laws where they are proposed, as well as to seek their limitation and repeal where they are already law.”
The RCA also warned that legalizing medically assisted suicide may drive clergy away from the health care industry due to a conflict between religious beliefs and civil law, and the legislation will be used to prey on vulnerable individuals.