NEW YORK (LifeSiteNews) — The Catholic bishops of New York state have expressed their aggrieved disapproval of Governor Kathy Hochul’s Wednesday announcement that she intended to sign the Medical Aid in Dying Act permitting doctors to assist terminally ill patients in committing suicide.
“We are extraordinarily troubled by Governor Hochul’s announcement that she will sign the egregious bill passed by the legislature earlier this year sanctioning physician-assisted suicide in New York,” reads a statement from Cardinal Timothy Dolan and his fellow bishops of the state.
“This new law signals our government’s abandonment of its most vulnerable citizens, telling people who are sick or disabled that suicide in their case is not only acceptable, but is encouraged by our elected leaders,” the prelates admonished.
The bill, first passed by the Assembly in April and confirmed by the senate in June, allows patients given a prognosis of six months or fewer to live to be prescribed lethal drugs, upon affirmation by two doctors that they have “decision-making capacity.”
“Tragically, this new law will seriously undermine all of the anti-suicide and mental health care investments Governor Hochul has made through her tenure,” the bishops lamented. “How can any society have credibility to tell young people or people with depression that suicide is never the answer, while at the same time telling elderly and sick people that it is a compassionate choice to be celebrated?”
Often described as “a devout Catholic,” Hochul proclaimed in her statement that “New York has long been a beacon of freedom, and now it is time we extend that freedom to terminally ill New Yorkers who want the right to die comfortably and on their own terms.”
The bishops affirmed the “the sacredness and dignity of all human life from conception until natural death” as articulated by Catholic teaching, and emphasized that this bill is “a grave moral evil on par with other direct attacks on human life,” such as laws permitting abortion, euthanasia, and embryonic stem cell research.
Addressing this legislation last May, Bishop Joseph Strickland explained how physician-assisted suicide was in no way an authentic act of charity or mercy:
True compassion does not eliminate suffering by eliminating the one who suffers. Rather, it means walking with the sick and dying and offering authentic palliative care, emotional support, and spiritual accompaniment. It is in these moments – when we are most vulnerable – that we must be reminded that our worth is not measured by our health, our productivity, or our independence, but by the fact that we are beloved children of God who are made in His image and likeness.
According to reports, Hochul successfully negotiated for several changes to the bill including a requirement that patients record and submit a video request for deadly chemical drugs, a five-day waiting period between reception of the prescription and its ability to be filled, and a limit for the law to apply to New York residents only, in order to prevent patients from other states traveling to the Empire State to commit suicide.
Addressing this question in his major work on the inviolability of innocent human life, Pope John Paul II affirmed in Evangelium Vitae (57):
No one is permitted to ask for this act of killing, either for himself or herself or for another person entrusted to his or her care, nor can he or she consent to it, either explicitly or implicitly. Nor can any authority legitimately recommend or permit such an action.
Clarifying the gravity of voting for such legislation, Strickland warned in May that legislators “who would support and vote for this legislation must know that doing so would not only enable the unjust taking of innocent human life, but it would also put their own souls in grave danger of eternal separation from God.”
Continuing in their statement, the New York prelates called “on Catholics and all New Yorkers to reject physician-assisted suicide for themselves, their loved ones, and those in their care.”
“And we pray that our state turn away from its promotion of a Culture of Death and invest instead in life-affirming, compassionate hospice and palliative care, which is seriously underutilized,” the bishops concluded.
Hochul plans to sign the bill in January with it going into effect six months later.
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