Originally published at National Catholic Register
Marker traveled extensively, both domestically and internationally, to speak out against euthanasia and assisted suicide.
Rita Marker, a longtime advocate against assisted suicide, died Oct. 30 at the age of 83.
Born in Washington state in 1940, Marker and her family settled in Steubenville, Ohio. After attending an international right-to-die convention in Europe and becoming alarmed by what she heard, she and her husband, Mike, established the International Anti-Euthanasia Task Force, later renamed the Patients Rights Council, where Rita served as the executive director until earlier this year.
Marker was a devout Catholic, and she and her husband, who were married for six decades, were appointed to the Vatican’s Pontifical Council on the Family by St. John Paul II.
The Catholic Church has long supported palliative care in the face of terminal illness and pain,which involves the holistic management of a person’s suffering. Assisted suicide and euthanasia — which both involve the intentional taking of life — are never permissible under Catholic teaching, though withholding “extraordinary means” of medical treatment and allowing death to occur naturally is morally permissible.
In her role as head of the Patients Rights Council, Marker wrote the 1995 book “Deadly Compassion: The Death of
