Switzerland: Christian Nursing Home Forced to Allow Assisted Suicide
- Updated Oct 14, 2016
A Christian-run nursing home in Switzerland is being forced to cater to patients who wish to die by physician-assisted suicide.
CBN News reports that the nursing home, located in Neuchatel, Switzerland, is connected to The Salvation Army and operates on Christian beliefs for the value of life.
It is legal in Switzerland to request assisted suicide from charitable institutions. Although the nursing home has appealed this law based on grounds of religious freedom, the government has rejected their appeal.
The nursing home now faces the choice either to embrace the law or to surrender its status as a charitable organization, which would strip them of government subsidies.
Experts and pro-life activists warn that this case in Switzerland could have implications for the U.S.
"Forcing medical people to breach their religious beliefs and be complicit in suicide/homicide is tyranny," Bioethics expert Wesley J. Smith wrote in National Review.
“Eventually that authoritarianism will come here too if assisted suicide becomes normalized, just as the ACLU is suing Catholic hospitals to force them to violate the Church's moral teachings around issues such as contraception and sterilization," he continued.
Currently, five states in the U.S. allow assisted suicide and 24 other states, plus Washington, D.C., are considering allowing it.
Publication date: October 14, 2016
