New Mexico Governor Signs Law Shielding Doctors Who Refuse to Participate in Assisted Suicide

New Mexico governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed a bill into law this week that gives doctors in the state the right to decline to participate in physician-assisted suicide if doing so is a violation of their conscience or religious beliefs.

After the Democrat signed the law on Tuesday, a group of Christian medical professionals who had challenged the state’s new physician-assisted suicide law in December declared victory and filed a court record seeking to dismiss their lawsuit.

Lawyers for Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents the Christian Medical & Dental Associations, commended New Mexico lawmakers for providing the conscience protections.

“The government should never force doctors to surrender their religious, moral, and ethical convictions,” ADF lawyer Mark Lippelman said in a prepared statement.

A lawsuit by ADF and the Christian Medical & Dental Associations challenging a similar physician-assisted suicide law in California is ongoing in that state.

New Mexico became the tenth U.S. state to legalize physician-assisted suicide when Grisham signed the New Mexico Elizabeth Whitefield End-of-Life Options Act in April 2021. At the time, supporters hailed it as the most progressive and accessible assisted-suicide law in the nation.

But ADF and its Christian clients argued that it required doctors to participate in physician-assisted suicide in ways that violate their religious convictions and professional ethics.

While New Mexico did not require doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to a terminal patient who requested them, it did require doctors to inform those patients about physician-assisted suicide as an option, and to refer them to doctors who would agree to participate in the suicide. ADF argued that those are forms of participation and mandating them was unconstitutional.

“Both New Mexico and California in some ways require doctors to basically check their beliefs at the door when it comes to physician-assisted suicide,” ADF lawyer Kevin Theriot told National Review earlier this year. New Mexico doctors who declined to participate based on their religious beliefs or professional ethics could have risked losing their medical licenses.

Theriot noted that the American Medical Association’s code of ethics states that physician-assisted suicide is “fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer.”

During a floor debate on the conscience-rights bill in early March, state Senator Joseph Cervantes, one of the bill’s sponsors, acknowledged that the legislation was related to the ADF lawsuit. He also acknowledged that he has run “into a little bit of issues with my clergy in the [Catholic Church]” over his support for physician-assisted suicide and abortion.

Cervantes, a Democrat, was denied communion by his church in 2021 after he voted to repeal a half-century-old law that criminalized abortion, according to media reports.

“It was important for me to represent the interests of those with religious beliefs that were challenged in some respects by this legislation,” Cervantes said.

During that floor debate, state Senator Gregg Schmedes, a Republican and a physician, told his colleagues that they need to be sensitive to conscience rights in a variety of areas.

“I am very concerned that multiple pieces of legislation that either have passed this chamber or are about to pass this chamber are making an identical mistake,” he said.

Physician-assisted suicide has been legal in some corners of the country for a quarter of a century. In 1997, after a Supreme Court ruling that left the matter to the states, Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act went into effect. It was the nation’s first physician-assisted suicide law.

Proponents of physician-assisted-suicide laws typically focus on the aim of ending excruciating pain to make the case that the practice is humane and compassionate. But research has shown that pain is typically not a top reason why people with terminal illnesses choose to end their lives early. Oregon keeps some of the best data on the subject.

According to a 2021 data summary, the main reasons why terminally ill patients in the state ended their lives through physician-assisted suicide included: “losing autonomy,” 93 percent; “less able to engage in activities making life enjoyable,” 92 percent;  “loss of dignity,” 68 percent; and “burden on family, friends/caregivers,” 54 percent.

Only a distinct minority, 27 percent, cited “inadequate pain control, or concern about it” as a reason for their decision. Doctors can typically remedy their patients’ pain, sometimes putting them to sleep, without administering a lethal overdose.

Dr. Jeffrey Barrows, senior vice president of bioethics and public policy for the Christian Medical & Dental Associations, said in a prepared statement that his organization’s members “aim to serve every patient with excellence and compassion, as image-bearers of God.”

“We strive to perform our work according to the dictates of our faith and professional ethics, including the belief that every life if precious,” he said. “We’re grateful New Mexico quickly responded to our lawsuit by enacting protections for conscientious physicians.”