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Democratic Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer signed a bill May 20 legalizing assisted suicide in the state, supporting deadly legislation that the previous governor had vetoed.
The state’s House Bill 140 makes it legal for adults given six months or fewer to live — a prognosis that is not always accurate — to request deadly drugs from their physicians to kill themselves. The legislation had previously failed in September 2024 when the state’s then-Governor John Carney, a Catholic, vetoed it.
When he vetoed it, Carney said he is “fundamentally and morally opposed to state law enabling someone, even under tragic and painful circumstances, to take their own life.”
The bill was introduced again in December. Carney’s term ended in January 2025, and Meyer became governor the same month. The House passed the bill 21 to 17 with three absent, and the Senate passed it in a vote 11 to eight, with two absent.
According to the diocesan paper The Dialog, Meyer stated that he was proud to sign the bill into law and that the law “gives people facing unimaginable suffering the ability to choose peace and comfort, surrounded by those they love.”
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The Diocese of Wilmington, which encompasses the whole state, had worked to oppose legislation to legalize assisted suicide, both this year and last year. In June 2024, it urged local Catholics and persons of goodwill to contact the governor and “and ask him to stand up for the elderly, sick and disabled, by vetoing this dangerous and immoral legislation.”
In February, all churches in the diocese were set to have postcards for Catholics to fill out in opposition of the bill, and the diocese delivered them to legislators. According to The Dialog, more than 11,000 postcards were sent. In March Bishop William Koenig led a rosary and celebrated Mass very close to the state capitol on the same day that the state legislature was going to reconvene for another session.
Bishop Koenig also spoke out against assisted suicide in April, saying that “there is a great distinction between, on the one hand, death that comes naturally and, on the other hand, performing actions to bring on death.”