Washington, DC—In response to the Portuguese parliament’s controversial vote today to make euthanasia and suicide by physician lawful, Americans United for Life issued the following statement:
“We get to choose one: suicide prevention, or suicide advocacy. We can’t have both,” said Catherine Glenn Foster, President and CEO of Americans United for Life. “Portugal’s embrace of suicide by physician imposes a regime of suicide advocacy upon the people. There will be deadly pressure on the marginalized, the economically fragile, and the socially vulnerable to make a life-ending decision in a context ultimately devoid of real choice. Every advance of suicide advocacy is a failure of equality under the law, because it makes citizens fundamentally unequal based on their situation. As we have seen whenever suicide by physician has been imposed here in the United States, while the most vulnerable are always targeted first, the pernicious affect of government-sponsored death reverberates through society. I unequivocally condemn this miscarriage of justice in Portugal, and will continue to fight to remind our nation and the world that each person deserves care, each person deserves compassion, and each person counts.”
Americans United for Life (AUL) is a nonprofit, public-interest law and policy organization that holds the distinction of being the first national pro-life organization in America—incorporated in 1971. It protects and defends human life from conception to natural death through vigorous legislative, judicial, and educational efforts.
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