Quelling moral panics? The case of physician aid in dying in California

Abstract

Moral panics are short-term heightened attention that can create long-term social change, especially through the creation of new laws or cultural meanings. Moral panics can by cyclical, repeating over time as old concerns re-emerge. However, the lifecourse of a moral panic is poorly understood, especially in terms of how a concern stops being a moral panic. This article uses newspaper opinion and editorial articles about a new physician aid-in-dying law to show that concerns about aid in dying have ceased to be a moral panic and that policy and medical experts played a role in quelling concerns. Policy and medical experts’ actions may stabilize the moral panic, but their actions also change the larger institutional fields of policy and medicine.