Several years ago, Canada began a program called Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID). Now it is beginning to reshape how Canadians are facing end-of-life situations. An article published in  The Atlantic in August of 2025 reports that 5% of all Canadian deaths in 2024 happened through physician assisted suicide.

This is a topic that will garner increasing attention in the United States as medical aid in dying is already legally permissible in 13 states and Washington DC. The General Social Survey has been asking a four question battery about suicide (with various justifications) for decades now.   

The Association of Religion Data Archives makes it easy to search the codebook for the GSS and pull out the relevant questions. They all start with the same preamble – Do you think a person has the right to end his or her own life if this person…There are four scenarios:



The person has an incurable disease

The person has gone bankrupt

The person has dishonored their family

The person is tired of living

It is clear that the American public has been much more open to the idea of suicide in the case of incurable disease compared to the other three situations. In 1977, 37% of the sample supported someone ending their own life if they had a disease that couldn’t be cured. That rose quickly through the next 15 years, crossing the majority support threshold by the late 1980s and rising to 60% in favor by the........

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