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Foreign It's Wednesday, June 3, 2026. I'm Albert Mohler, and this is the Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. At times, we just have to take an opportunity, pause and reflect on something big that's happening and understand sometimes numbers really do help to signal when something big is happening. So here's the big thing. As of a matter of weeks from now, one third of the American population will live where some form of assisted suicide is legal. So we're talking about a revolution taking place right in our own times. So when I say right in our own times, I mean like right now, right in terms of these weeks. Now, of course, some of this goes back. The state of Oregon was the first. But you also have other states that have come on. By the time we come to the end of the summer, 13 states that will house about one third of the American population will offer some form of what is often euphemistically, and I think falsely called medical assistance or medical aid in dying, but is really assisted suicide. And so as we're thinking about huge worldview, huge moral issues, it's hard to come up with one bigger than this. It's hard to come up with a seismic development of greater magnitude than this because we are talking here about life and death. Now, when we think about the issue of life and death, let's just remember that we're in a society that has been living in denial for a matter of decades now about the reality of life and death. And that means living in direct defiance to life as a divine gift, the gift of life coming from God. And so on the first wave, we saw this among those not yet born. And we're still seeing it, of course, but the subversion of life and the dignity and sanctity of life before birth came first. But euthanasia is fast on its heels. And as a matter of fact, at least in terms of public discussion among the ideological progressives, they've been together all along. It's just a matter of the political agenda and the calendar. So let's just talk about a big article that appeared yesterday in the New York Times headline, more States Adopt Medical Aid and Dying Laws. Okay, so this is not on the front page. We're talking about page D3. So this means section D, that's the fourth section in the printed edition of the paper on page three. And it's actually below the fold. So that tells you this is not signaling a gigantic story. This is not a front page story. This is actually many pages into the paper. But Christians will look at this and say, this is really so significant. It's hard to imagine this anywhere other than on the front page. It's hard to imagine this story is doing anything but alerting us to a massive subversion of human dignity and the sanctity of life in our time. Okay, so the article tells us that state by state, there is movement in this direction. And there's a particular woman whose experience is cited here. The woman's name, Jules Netherland. And we're told that she, quote, traveled from her home in the Bronx to the state capital of Albany, New York, several times in the past few years, hoping to persuade the legislature to pass a medical aid and dying bill allowing terminally ill patients to end their lives with a lethal prescription. Okay, so this is activism. We can see this here. We understand this. Quote, she spoke at rallies with other members of the advocacy organization Compassion and Choices. Let's just stop there for a moment. Compassion and Choices. You see how this kind of moral revolution is fueled. It's fueled at least in part, with language. And if you can package your proposal as about compassion, well, you can see how you can make great cultural advance. If you can make death look like compassion. If you can sell package assisted suicide as compassion, well, in a morally confused age, you can make a lot of progress. And, of course, that's what the cause did in New York. Quote, her activism was becoming difficult. Ms. Netherland, who is 59 and works for a nonprofit, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2019. She went on with aggressive treatment, chemotherapy, surgery, other things. Quote, she recovered and felt well until the cancer returned a few years later. Although metastatic breast cancer is incurable, drugs are keeping the disease at bay. For now, the woman, Ms. Netherland, quote, feels fortunate, but also fatigued, and she contends with brain fog, gastrointestinal symptoms, and joint pain. She says this, quote, my energy is really limited. As she emailed and called legislators, Ms. Netherland feared she might die before the Aid and Dying bill, first introduced in New York in 2016, could become law. Okay, did you notice that? I mean, this sentence is actually explosive. It's remarkable. This is an activist for assisted suicide packaged in the name of this group, Compassion and Choices. And her concern was that she might die before the dying bill. The Aid and Dying bill was passed by the legislature could become law. That's an astounding statement in moral terms, and it shows you something of how what can only be described as a certain obsession is now taking over much of the culture when it comes to assisted suicide now with sympathy to this woman. She's clearly been suffering, and that suffering is traceable to a very understandable medical condition or struggle with breast cancer. And so clearly, compassion is the right word to use in terms of our concern for her. But the Christian worldview tells us that it can never, ever, under any circumstances, be compassionate to kill. And that doesn't mean it's not compassionate to alleviate pain. It is. We should. It doesn't mean that it's not compassionate to move in and try to alleviate suffering in such a way that you work within the ethical bounds of medicine and at the same time recognize that there's a distinction between those who are alive and those who are in the active dying process. And so Christians understand that when you have a body that's breaking down, you have an active dying process. Christians cannot accelerate that dying process, but we can respond with appropriate medical treatments to try to alleviate anything from pain to confusion and all the rest. Okay, but the big story here is that in the state of New York, well, you're going to have medical assistance in dying, legal medical assistance in dying as of August 5th. So we're talking about just weeks away. And then just a matter of weeks after that, in September, the state of Illinois will join in the states with some form of legal assisted suicide. Okay, so put that together. We're talking about at least 13 states, and we're talking about 1/3 of the US population because some of these states are actually quite large. And so when you're talking about an issue this big, we are talking about life and death. And by the way, everybody knows we're talking about life and death. What you see here is this clash of worldviews between people who say, you know, human life is simply something that is a reality. It is up for our definition. It's up for our control, our autonomy. And then those who say no, it is the gift of life given to us by the Creator, and it is the Creator himself who numbers our days. And there is compassionate medical care, but killing is not and can never be compassionate. All right, there are a couple of other issues that have to be mentioned in terms of this analysis. Number one, all but two of the states, we are told, require patients to be residents. But Oregon and Vermont scrapped their residency requirements. We're told to settle lawsuits brought by Compassion and Choices. There's that same organization again. And so here's a very strange thing for us just to take into account, and that is that there are people who are forming entire organizations with legal strategies and with institutional support to try to further this kind of agenda. And whereas we also need to note, but we also need to note that the way these issues move in society is that they begin somewhere here on the periphery. And they sound very strange, they're very bizarre, they're outside the mainstream, but then they begin to work their way into the center. And the fact is that most Americans are slow to recognize when those groups are really coming close. And then it's kind of like concentric circles. The inner circles are smaller, and so the movement accelerates. And that's exactly what we saw with abortion. 1973, Roe v. Wade didn't exactly come out of the blue, but did appear to many Americans to come out of the blue when it comes to medical aid in dying. This has been building for. For generations, and in particular over the last several years, and these organizations like Compassion and Choices, these things have been working. They're working 24 7. And I think many Americans are going to be shocked when the next thing they know, their own state legislature is working on this, or the legislature in the state next door. Okay, so about one third of the American population. So we're talking about something that has reached not only an undeniable cultural momentum, but. But we understand the agenda is going to be to bring this into every state. Now, by the way, there are a couple other things we need to note very quickly. It's not just the open euthanasia argument, the open assisted suicide argument, the personal autonomy argument that's used. It is also a libertarian argument that people ought to have the libertarian freedom to make this kind of choice. And, you know, this is where you look even at a map of the United States. You say Red America and Blue America, but not all of Blue America is blue in exactly the same way. And even to a greater degree, not all red America is red in the same way. And so it comes down to the fact that if you are operating from a Christian worldview, and you're a Christian conservative operating out of a unitary worldview in terms of human dignity and everything else that's connected to it, well, you're in a very different position than someone who's operating from a libertarian worldview and may vote conservative on so many issues, but actually believes that the big issue is to remove obstacles to human moral freedom. And that would include laws against euthanasia or assisted suicide. And so it is going to be very interesting. I think there are some Christians who all of a sudden realize that even someone sitting, say, not far from them in church actually operates whether that person knows it or not, out of a more libertarian worldview than a biblical Christian worldview. That's something we do very much need to watch. But then, at the Free Press, a massively important report entitled the Parents who Let Their Daughter Die. It is by Rupa Subramania, who writes in the areas of health and self improvement for the Free Press. I think that's interesting, too. Just to note health and self improvement. I also want to say this article by the Free Press is very, very important. And I am thankful to the Free Press for running it because its candor is bracing. The way it just sets the issues before us is shocking. It begins with the story of a very young woman and her parents. The parents are Omar and Sissy Decker. Their daughter, teenage daughter, was Iris. They began every day, quote, lifting her out of bed and trying to coax her into a life she no longer wanted. End quote. Okay, so it is clearly a very dark picture. We're talking about a teenage girl. But the problems here, which do have some physical manifestations, have nothing to do with a terminal physical disease. They have to do with issues of bodily perception and other things, and also clinical depression. We're told that the father himself has a history of it, as do other members of his family. But Iris was different. Her symptoms were psychological and physical. A condition called functional neurological disorder, associated with severe psychological distress and depression. It often presents with symptoms like paralysis, seizures and chronic pain. She, in some sense, has attempted suicide. It's not clear how serious these were, but nonetheless, the article tells us, quote, At 15, she tried to kill herself twice. The second attempt, we are told, raised the possibility that there was a more humane way to die. Under Dutch law, euthanasia, which is allowed in cases of unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvements. We're then told also that in the Netherlands, I remember this started out only adults, only those facing an undeniable short end of life with a terminal disease. That's all been changed. The terminal disease basically went such that it's now also psychological. And the age continued to go down. The Free Press tells us, quote, in the Netherlands, teens as young as 16 can request euthanasia on their own. Parents must be consulted, but their permission is not required, end quote. So just understand that this is how the culture of death moves forward. So even parents are left out. They have teenage children, and the teenage children have the right, according to the law in the Netherlands, to request assisted suicide or euthanasia. And the parents, well, they have to be consulted, but they have no right to block it. We're then told, quote, those between 12 and 15 may seek euthanasia with parental or guardian consent. Okay, so this young woman went forward and eventually her parents did not get in her way. You also have the development of all these different issues. You have the courts becoming involved in Europe. This is a very dangerous precedent. And this became the fact when you had a young woman named Noelia Castillo Ramos in Spain and a Spanish court rejected the efforts of her father to stop this. And then you also had international courts there in Europe that were also siding on the side of assisted suicide or euthanasia or death. But the big issue in this article in the Free Press is the exposure of the fact that a lot of this is just based upon some kind of psychiatric diagnosis, some kind of definition that then becomes the pretext for what is defined as a persistent euthanasia wish. But you also have examples where the medical experts are saying that when you have this young woman, for example, and her situation, when you're talking about the challenge faced by Iris, this teenager, there are medical personnel who use the phrase treatment resistant. And the Free Press report makes it very clear that this leads some young people and even some older people to say, well, that's a diagnosis of the fact that I will never get better. Actually, there is no such diagnosis. The medical authorities are clear, they're not in a position to say she will not get better, even much, much better. The fact is that this phrase treatment resistant is taken by so many of these young people as a confirmation of absolute hopelessness, when actually that's not what the words even mean. As a matter of fact, a recent paper cited in the article that was published in Psychological Medicine noted that medical personnel cannot accurately predict long term chances of recovery in a particular patient with treatment resistant depression. So there's that treatment resistant phrase. And here you have medical authorities saying that medical authorities are in no place to offer some kind of concrete prediction. But here you have a situation in which you have a set of medical authorities saying that medical authorities in general are actually in no position to say that this suffering is interminable, that it cannot be resolved, that it will not go away. And one of the experts in this field said, quote, you tell a young person there's a disorder in their head and then you confirm that nothing can be done. And then you understand how this acceleration towards the culture of death happens. This article also says that when there are patients who don't go through the normal process of assisted suicide, one of the new things is that is developed, it's called vsed. So I think this is a good thing for all Christians to understand. Vsed, that stands for voluntary stopping of eating and drinking. Death then comes by dehydration, typically over days or a few weeks. And medical personnel can cooperate with this by offering palliatives, you know, pain relief and all the rest to try to dull the sensations of what is going on. It's also interesting to look at the parents in this case because I think these parents, the parents of this teenage girl who did go through with the process of medical assistance and dying of assisted suicide, she did go through with it. And the parents are basically saying it was her choice to make and remember she was a teenager at the time. But even as in this case, I think it's clear her parents loved her very dearly. I don't think anyone should question that they operated within a set of moral expectations and clearly they had bought into this. In which case this girl's determination, her self determination was supreme over everything else. And if she decided she was going to invoke the supposed right to medical assistance in dying, who were they to say that she couldn't or shouldn't do that? And by the way, the law said that she could do it and they just decided to be supportive of her. I think this is very perverse logic and I just want Christian parents, regardless of where you live, to understand this logic is coming for you, this logic is coming for your family. There are those pushing the culture of death who very much want to push this kind of mentality, in which I think there are a lot of parents following this logic just shaped by this logic, who would simply say, who are we to get in the way of our teenager exercising her legal right when it comes to something like medical assistance and dying, who are we to say? And I think again, that's a huge abdication of responsibility. But I don't think that's the way these parents saw the kids case at all. And nor do I think, by the way, that's the way authorities in the Netherlands saw it. All right, so the end of the story is she died before her 20th birthday. And I just want to raise again the fact that this is just a huge issue and that story in the New York Times that tells us that one third of Americans already live under some form of assisted suicide or that that's true by say the middle of the summer. That's just really important for us to know. The logic of the culture of death is spreading here. We have seen how fast it has spread remarkably tragically. Horrifyingly fast in Canada, right across our northern border. But now we're talking about something that is in one third or will be in just a matter of weeks, within one third of the American population, about 13 of the American states. And this is the way something accelerates. It's not just that it exists, it's that it accelerates. This is fair warning to all of us. We need to know what we're up against. All right, speaking about what we're up against, very interesting development. And I want to be very, very honest. This is very important. We need to be very, very honest as we talk about this. Because when we talk about big moral issues in politics, we need to recognize right now that's a bipartisan reality. And the big story right now, the headlines have to do with Graham Platner. And he is currently the front runner for sure right now on the Democratic side, hoping to run against Republican incumbent Senator Susan Collins there for one of the two senatorial positions in Maine. Maine. Now, this story turns out to be really, really interesting. For one thing, Janet Mills, the incumbent governor who was intending to run in this race and to run against Susan Collins, she basically had to back out because there wasn't enough public support. An incumbent governor backing out under these circumstances, that's big news. But she really backed out because Graham Platner, who had showed up as kind of a non traditional Democratic candidate, was just gaining all kinds of media attention. And there was no doubt he was way ahead in the primaries. And I guess an incumbent governor decided she did want to risk losing to this first time candidate, or in this case, first time insurgent candidate. And so the big story, however, after that became the fact that this oyster farmer, that's the way he's described, is very much a part of Maine culture. That makes a lot of sense. And he presents himself as kind of Maine Everyman. And he's a war veteran. No one can doubt that. Two different wars he was actively involved in. He says he then suffered from ptsd. And of course, that is the shock which comes as a diagnosable event, often in battle. Post traumatic stress syndrome. Okay, so now he's running for the governorship. But there's a lot of attention. And the attention, of course, in recent days has to do with the fact that his wife had told his campaign a matter of months ago, back indeed in 2025 when he was considering the race, she had warned his campaign staff of the existence of, I'm going to put this as carefully as I can, very sexually explicit texts with Other women. That is to say, he was married to the woman who reported this to the campaign. But these were very sexually explicit text messages with other women. Now, this situation did not come to the understanding of the campaign because in this case, Graham Platner's wife was trying to end his campaign, but rather she just said, you know, the campaign needs to know this. As you're looking at possible opposition and embarrassments and obstacles, you just need to know this. Then other reports had come indicating a couple of big things. Number one, Reddit posts and other things that were way out of line and by the way, particularly out of line with a lot of Democratic Party messaging. And I can just say some racist, really mean spirited, just. I'll just say really bad things that Graham Platner had posted in various formats. And then also you had the situation in which he has a tattoo. And that tattoo is basically, and again, I'm going to speak here euphemistically, it is basically a very well known Nazi symbol associated with the most horrifying group among the Nazis, which was the ss. And so he said he didn't know it had that association. And so for someone who, by the way, was so involved in the military, I think there's a pretty bipartisan consensus that it's impossible that such a person did not know that insignia from the SS and the Nazis. And again, Graham Platner is saying that he was in the military. He says he did stupid things. He doesn't exactly say he's embarrassed by him now, but he just says, you know, back in that time, I was doing stupid things. I had, you know, post traumatic stress syndrome. I was young. All these things, young people, you know, people in such a situation do stupid things. And he's basically tried to dismiss it. Okay, so the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, other major media are giving attention especially to this explicit sexting issue. And then you have people coming out and saying, you know, I just don't think it matters anymore. So here's something I just want to address. Honestly. There's an article by Joanna Slater just published at the Washington Post, and the headline is this. In key Senate race, Graham Platner's Sexting Controversy Doesn't Faze Voters. Hmm. Okay, that's interesting. This is the Washington Post, and the Washington Post is coming back and saying that these days, these things just don't matter like they used to. This kind of clear misbehavior, this kind of clear, even sexually explicit misbehavior, this kind of inflammatory misbehavior. No longer factors politically as it used to. And as a matter of fact, you can imagine exactly what many of the Democrats supportive of Graham Platner are saying. They're saying, you know, look, it was Donald Trump who broke all these rules. It was Donald Trump in terms of his very flamboyant, colorful and sometimes sexually explicit background. And I won't go into documentation here, but let's just say everyone understands exactly what the argument is here coming from some of these Democrats. It was Republicans who broke the rule. Now, you could also say Republicans would say, well, hey, it was Democrats who broke the rule of Bill Clinton back in the 1990s with the Monica Lewinsky scandal where you tried to say, yes, it happened, but it doesn't matter, no big deal. I just want to say, as a Christian, we can't ever do anything other than lament when you have the moral unraveling of a civilization. And quite frankly, it is now a bipartisan issue. It is now so widespread through our society that you're going to see more and more of this, not less and less of this. And I just want to remind Christians, and of course, there are big political considerations, and I've tried to be very honest about those political considerations. You end up with candidates who represent two absolutely contrary worldviews. And at some point you realize that voting for an individual is important simply because you want to see that worldview, those policies put into place on issues of ultimate significance. I just want to say that for Christians, we just never can argue, or let me put it this way, we must never argue that character doesn't matter. We must never argue that personal morality just doesn't matter and that this kind of background issue just doesn't matter. The Democrats think right now, and especially with someone like Graham Platner, they can pretty much get away with this because of other developments among Republicans. And the fact is, I just want to say, as a conservative, as a Christian, I think it's vitally important that we remember that we can never say character is not important. We can never say that personal morality is not important. We do recognize that in a fallen world, we are often presented with difficult political and moral questions. In particular, when you get to something like a presidential election or in the case of what appears to be about to happen in the state of Maine, when you get to a senatorial election, you're going to elect, that is to say, you're going to vote for R or D, and that's going to come with moral consequences. And we are in a highly complex age and frankly, the corruption of our culture and the defining deviancy down. That's a term that came during the 1980s and 90s. That's just something we do need to recognize, is a big problem. And I think one of the first steps for Christians is just acknowledging, yes, that is a big problem. It's also very, very interesting that in one of these articles in the mainstream media, someone in Maine was simply asked, and that person was not identified, but was simply asked, what do you expect to happen next? And this man basically said, well, it's hard for me to believe that there weren't these texts without flying photographs. So who knows what's coming next? You just have to believe at some point, at some point, Americans, you could say citizens of Maine when it comes to this senatorial election. But Americans have to come to some understanding of how these things fit together. And in a fallen world, sometimes it's hard to say in advance exactly what kind of decision will be faced in an election. I do think it's important that Christians, even as we look to the presidential election in 2028, I think it's important that we start thinking through, you know, exactly how should we be thinking about this? Because all too quickly, guess what, listeners, we're all going to be thinking about this. Let's pray that we think carefully and faithfully. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website@albertmohler.com you can follow me on X or Twitter by going to x.comalbertmohler for information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu. for information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege. Com. I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.