New York’s Catholic bishops have issued a statement reaffirming the dignity of every human person ahead of the state’s assisted suicide law coming into force in less than a week.
“On August 5, New York becomes the latest in a growing number of jurisdictions where state-sanctioned suicide is authorized. With this sad milestone, our elected officials have turned the notion of ‘death with dignity’ on its head,” Dennis Poust, executive director of the New York State Catholic Conference, said in a statement issued on July 30.
The New York State Catholic Conference represents the state’s Catholic bishops in working with government “to shape laws and policies that pursue social justice, respect for life and the common good”, according to the organisation’s website.
Human beings, Poust said, “never lose their innate dignity, no matter how much their physical bodies betray them”. Physician-assisted suicide, in which doctors prescribe lethal medication to patients seeking to end their lives, “does not enhance their dignity; it only enhances a coarsening of our culture and the bottom lines for insurers and medical facilities”.
Assisted suicide is “a failure of compassion”, he said, particularly if lawmakers use the new law as a reason to delay what he described as “appropriate investments in access to palliative and hospice care”.
Legalising assisted suicide carries “tragically predictable” consequences, Poust said, pointing to developments in other jurisdictions where the practice is legal.
Canada, for example, “in just a few short years expanded its law to apply not only in cases of terminal illness but in cases of chronic illness and, effective next year, mental illness. We would also expect the state’s mixed messaging on suicide to lead to an increase in suicides in general, including by young, physically healthy people,” he said.
The bishops asked all New Yorkers to “pray for those facing difficult health crises, depression, disability, and the end-of-life”, and for the state to “embrace a Culture of Life”.
Meanwhile, one Catholic diocese in New York, together with several communities of Religious Sisters, has filed suit seeking to prevent the law from taking effect.
The case, Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm v. Letitia James, was filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of New York on July 17. Letitia James is New York’s attorney general.
The plaintiffs argue that New York’s Medical Aid in Dying Act would force them to violate their consciences by requiring participation in the process of ending patients’ lives.
