The defeat of the 2012 Death with Dignity ballot measure in Massachusetts was a story of message and morality with the Catholic Church at its center. I’ve recently published an article on that campaign in the journal American Catholic Studies titled “The Defeat of Physician Assisted Suicide: Morality and Message in a Massachusetts Referendum.” I hope there are some lessons about the referendum process in the article, especially inasmuch as the referendum could be renewed down the road.

According to a September 2012 poll by Suffolk University, death with dignity enjoyed overwhelming public support among the electorate with sixty-four percent in favor and twenty-seven percent opposed, with nine percent undecided. Yet on Election Day November 6 the proposal was narrowly defeated, fifty-one percent to forty-nine percent. In ACS I argued that three factors keyed the reversal: money, message, and coalition building.         

The money was Catholic but the campaign’s messaging was not religious in nature. An examination of campaign finance reports showed that the vast money advantage that fueled the opposition’s television campaign came from the Catholic Church or independent institutions that support the Church.

The television advertisements paid for by the Catholic money were directed to secular themes.  Back in 1948 the Church opposed a referendum to liberalize the commonwealth’s birth control laws with billboards that blared “It’s still against God’s law.” That worked decades ago but in the twenty-first century such a message would have no chance of working with Catholic voters, never mind the vastly more diverse electoral population the Church would need to persuade. But I also found by examining articles and editorials in the archdiocesan newspaper The Pilot that messaging directed to the Catholic community was also overwhelmingly secular. So were tweets by @CardinalSean – the twitter handle of Boston’s Cardinal Seán O’Malley. This was among the earliest if not the first instance of a Catholic cardinal tweeting on a public policy referendum.

It was not only in messaging that the Church acted with political nuance. Opponents of death with dignity realized that a campaign that seemed to revolve around the Catholic Church would be off putting to many voters. The opposition thus structured a broad religious coalition with leaders of many religious denominations joining in.  The controversial measure wound up attracting a diverse opposition, including the editorial page of the Boston Globe and the Massachusetts Medical Society.

In fact the Church’s entry into the public policy arena was far more sophisticated than past efforts, especially its opposition to same-sex marriage. One such example: in the same-sex marriage fight the Church had allied itself with some conservative groups that were anathema to Massachusetts voters. In 2012 the Committee Against Physician Assisted Suicide returned a $250,000 contribution from the American Family Association, a conservative organization controversial in the state.

I’ll have more to say about morality and message, money, and coalition politics in the Death with Dignity campaign in upcoming posts.