Pro

The Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, in the 2001 "President's Commission on the Sanctity of Life," titled "That They May Live," available at www.lcms.org, wrote:

“Assisted-suicide/euthanasia violates the Hippocratic Oath, the foundation for medical ethics for more than 2,000 years. The Hippocratic Oath explicitly forbids assistedsuicide/euthanasia by requiring doctors to pledge, ‘to give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect.’ The Christian ethicist, Gilbert Meilaender, interprets the Oath as creating a positive obligation for physicians to ‘be committed to the bodily life of their patients.’ Assisted-suicide/euthanasia clearly conflicts with this moral obligation since it is an act intended to end the patient’s bodily life. This is one reason why organized medicine—ranging from the World Medical Association, to the American Medical Association (AMA), to almost all of the state medical associations—overwhelmingly opposes legalizing assisted-suicide/euthanasia.”

2001