Abstract

Whether physicians may refuse on religious or moral grounds to take part in medically assisted death is the central question of this review. Scholarship on religion at the end of life has concentrated on patients; this article turns toward providers and asks how far their convictions deserve the protections patients already enjoy. It traces the long entanglement of religion and medicine, from Egyptian priest-healers and early Christian hospitals to today's religiously affiliated health systems, and revisits the right-to-die cases of Karen Ann Quinlan, Nancy Cruzan, Terri Schiavo, and Brittany Maynard along with the shift in terminology from physician-assisted suicide to medical aid in dying. On the strength of the Hippocratic tradition, prohibitions against killing shared across major religions, and the conscientious-objection literature, the author argues that clinicians are moral agents with a right to refuse. Referral to a willing provider, the review concludes, protects the physician's conscience without abandoning the patient.