The American Medical Association (AMA)’s House of Delegates “overwhelmingly rejected” changing the organization’s longstanding position that physician-assisted suicide is incompatible with the healing role of the doctor, Patients’ Rights Action Fund (PRAF) reported June 9.

The AMA’s more than 600 voting delegates — who represent entities such as state medical associations, national medical specialty organizations, and professional interest medical associations — are meeting this week in Chicago, the organization’s website said. 

The association has maintained its policy on physician-assisted suicide since 1994, according to PRAF, an organization dedicated to ending assisted suicide. PRAF reports that the House also greenlighted a report from the association’s trustees that keeps the language used to describe physician-assisted suicide clear. Advocates in favor of the practice often use euphemisms such as “aid in dying” or similar language, especially avoiding the word “suicide.” 

In the AMA’s background reports document on its policy on physician-assisted suicide, it states that the House’s Council on Judicial and Ethical Affairs reviewed concerns on proper terminology and concluded that using the term “physician assisted suicide” “describes the practice with the greatest precision” and “clearly distinguishes the practice from euthanasia.” The council also noted that referring to physician assisted suicide as “aid in dying” or using the term “death with dignity” is too ambiguous because that could be in reference to euthanasia or palliative care. 

The AMA’s Code of Medical Ethics asserts in chapter 5 that “Physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks.” The code recommends physicians respect patient autonomy and provide good palliative care, rather than assisted suicide, when a patient is nearing the end of his or her life. The AMA also expresses sympathy for patients experiencing extreme suffering who decide death is better than living. 

“However, permitting physicians to engage in assisted suicide would ultimately cause more harm than good,” the AMA’s code adds. 

In the same chapter, the AMA also provides “the thoughtful moral basis for those who support assisted suicide.” In this section, the AMA emphasizes the importance of physicians’ conscience rights, although it also notes that their “freedom to act according to conscience is not unlimited.”

“Physicians are expected to provide care in emergencies, honor patients’ informed decisions to refuse life-sustaining treatment, and respect basic civil liberties and not discriminate against individuals in deciding whether to enter into a professional relationship with a new patient,” the AMA states, adding that in other instances physicians may be able to act in a way that both honors their conscience and their professional expectations. 

The AMA also has policies for physicians to consider when following their consciences, stating under one bullet point that if they object to a certain treatment, physicians should refer patients to another physician that can provide it; and if the physician objects morally to referring the patient at all, “the physician should offer impartial guidance to patients about how to inform themselves regarding access to desired services.”

Overall, however, the AMA recommends under this section that the physician should either continue providing alternative care for the patient or “formally terminate the patient-physician relationship in keeping with ethics guidance.”

Catholic ethicist Dr. Kristin Collier, an associate professor of medicine at University of Michigan, posted on X June 9 thanking the expressing gratitude to the AMA for the vote to reject changing its policy on physician-assisted suicide. In the same thread, Catholic bioethicist Charlie Camosy also reacted, “This is amazing.”