More Back Right to Die, Novelist Says

More Americans are supporting the right of the terminally ill to die, reports Father Andrew Greeley, Roman Catholic novelist and sociologist.

Drawing on surveys by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, he says about 75% of Americans, no matter what their religion, now think doctors should be allowed by law to end a terminal patient’s life if the family requests it.

That’s up from about 60% in the late 1970s.

Writing in the ecumenical weekly, Christian Century, Greeley says there also is increasing support of suicides for those with incurable diseases, rising from 40% in the late 1970s to about half.