January 22, 2025 at 10:07 a.m.
‘WE CAN AND MUST DO BETTER’
In his 1995 encyclical “Evangelium Vitae” (“The Gospel of Life”), St. John Paul II warned of euthanasia and assisted suicide, stating, “Here we are faced with one of the more alarming symptoms of the ‘culture of death.’ ”
In 2020, the Vatican reaffirmed and clarified church teachings on end-of-life care in a 25-page letter titled “ ‘Samaritanus Bonus,’ on the Care of Persons in the Critical and Terminal Phases of Life.” The letter stated “those who approve laws of euthanasia and assisted suicide, therefore, become accomplices of a grave sin that others will execute. They are also guilty of scandal because by such laws they contribute to the distortion of conscience, even among the faithful.”
In 2022, Pope Francis — who has decried euthanasia as “always wrong” — said when the Italian Parliament resumed discussions about assisted suicide that “we must accompany people toward death, but not provoke death or facilitate assisted suicide. He added that this applies to everyone, “not just Christians or believers.”
The thin line between euthanasia and medically assisted suicide is defined by who administers a lethal dose of drugs. In euthanasia — currently illegal throughout the United States — medical personnel actively kill the patient under certain criteria; in medically assisted suicide, the physician prescribes the lethal drugs to the patient, but doesn’t administer them directly — the patient does.
In the United States — where assisted suicide currently is legal in 10 states plus the District of Columbia — and abroad, the practice continues to become legal and accepted at an alarming rate. In November, British lawmakers voted in favor of a medically-assisted suicide bill — dubbed the “Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill” — which seeks to allow those who are 18-plus and terminally ill to be given an “approved” substance to die, with some conditions.
Catholic bishops in England decried the vote, with one saying it represented a “dark day” in the history of the country and with Bishop Philip Egan of Portsmouth adding, “it leaves me sad as it will put an intolerable pressure on the elderly and the terminally ill and undermine the trust normally placed in doctors and carers. I fear too the ever-growing expansion of eligibility to other categories of people. Britain has now crossed a line: things will not be the same again. May God help us.”
The bill was sent to the British Parliament in advance of a final vote.
“Central to virtually all efforts to legalize PAS (physician-assisted suicide) is the mistaken notion that ‘dying with dignity’ could ever mean ‘killing yourself’ or ‘encouraging a physician to kill you,’ ” said Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, senior ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, in an interview with OSV News. “Neither are dignified in any way. Both represent a colossal failure on the part of the medical establishment and the healing arts.”
In Canada, assisted suicide has increased, where it has been allowed since 2016. The 15,343 who did so in 2023 — a number that did not include over 2,900 individuals who died before their “medical assistance in dying” or MAID request could be approved — accounted for 4.7 percent, or one in 20, of Canada’s 2023 deaths, according to government data. The country’s federal Health Canada agency announced last November the rollout of a “national conversation” — which concludes this January — on the issue of advance requests for MAID. The province of Quebec, which in 2023 saw the highest number (36.5 percent) of Canada’s MAID applications, began accepting advance requests for MAID on Oct. 30.
“The sick and suffering should be precious to us,” emphasized Father Pacholczyk, “and they do not ever deserve an overdose or a lethal prescription. They deserve accompaniment, careful pain management, and being loved unconditionally until the end arrives.
“They deserve,” Father Pacholczyk added, “to have us hold their hand and journey with them, activities that require a much greater commitment of time and energy on our part than the quick-and-dirty option of passing out ‘kill pills.’ ”
In New York state, the battle against assisted suicide continues to be waged with the New York State Catholic Conference (NYSCC) leading the charge. The Medical Aid in Dying Act is again circulating in both houses, which it has for over a decade.
“There are so many reasons to oppose this bill. We only have to look at Canada to see the danger this bill poses. That country passed a bill very similar to New York’s back in 2016 and eligibility already has been expanded from people with terminal illnesses to people with chronic illnesses, and it is set to be expanded again to people with mental illness,” wrote Dennis Poust, executive director at the New York State Catholic Conference, in an email to The Evangelist. “As a society, we must do better for our vulnerable and sick than to tell them their life is not worth living. Vulnerable people will be steered toward assisted suicide for economic reasons, and people with depression will be handed pills instead of the care they need. The bill does not even require a psychiatric consultation for those seeking suicide drugs. We can and must do better.”
With inflation, cost-of-living and immigration top concerns for most New Yorkers, many might not be aware of how hard advocates are pushing for the bill’s passage.
“This bill has been around for 10 years, and for 10 years lawmakers have rejected it. That said, the advocates promoting it have money and continue to get better organized. The counts in the health committees in both houses of the legislature are very close,” Poust said. “We continue to make the case that lawmakers should focus on the priorities of New Yorkers, like affordability, mental health, public safety, and addiction. There is no public outcry to pass this bill. It is very low on the priority list for most voters, but the advocates are disproportionately loud.”
Poust said the best way for Catholics to get involved “is to join the Catholic Action Network, by going to www.nyscatholic.org/action-center or text CAN to 50457. We provide an easy way to contact elected officials so Catholics can make their voices heard on this and other crucial issues.”
The following is the NYSCC’s full Memorandum of Opposition,
which was released on Dec. 23, to the Medical Aid in Dying Act:
The (Medical Aid in Dying Act) would add a new section of the Public Health Law to allow physicians to prescribe lethal doses of medication for the express purpose of ending a patient’s life.
The New York State Catholic Conference opposes this bill for many reasons.
For years, we have argued that legalizing assisted suicide would result in a slippery slope. The ongoing euthanasia scandal in Canada is providing a real-time example of just how slippery the slope can be. What began in 2016 as a limited program for those with irreversible, terminal and painful illness has morphed into something entirely different in just a few years.
Subsequent to its initial legalization, availability for assisted suicide in Canada was expanded to those without terminal illness, but merely with an “intolerable” condition. There are plans in place to expand it further, to the mentally ill and even to “mature minors.” Assisted suicide has been discussed and sought out as a solution for homelessness. There have been reports of doctors offering it to veterans suffering from PTSD, and those in need of extra help to live independently. As the Associated Press recently reported, people with disabilities and depression have been euthanized. It has been written about in terms of the cost-savings it would provide for the healthcare industry.
These shocking developments prove that such a law, even with so-called safeguards, devalues human life. Implementing assisted suicide as an accepted medical “treatment” sends the message that our most vulnerable populations are not worth the resources it might take to improve their lives. Those most at risk of being taken advantage of and discarded by the health system will be endangered further.
Legalizing physician-assisted suicide would:
• Blur longstanding medical, moral and legal distinctions between withdrawing extraordinary medical assistance and taking active steps to destroy human life. The former removes burdensome or useless treatments, allowing nature to take its course, and allowing the patient to either live or die. The latter is the deliberate and direct act of making a patient dead. In 2017, New York’s highest court said this distinction is “important, logical, and certainly rational,” adding that “it turns on intent.” (See Myers v. Schneiderman, September 7, 2017)
• Undermine the physician’s role as healer, forever altering the doctor-patient relationship, and lessen the quality of care provided to patients at the end of life. Patients are best served when medical professionals, together with families and loved ones, provide support and care with dignity and respect, not lethal doses of drugs. The American Medical Association continues to hold a strong policy position against physician-assisted suicide, which they say is “fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role” and would be “difficult or impossible to control.”
This particular legislation contains many of the same fatal flaws contained in previous versions:
• it does not require screening, testing, or treatment for clinical depression;
• it requires a physician to list the underlying illness (and not the lethal drugs) as the cause of death, making it impossible to know how widely this form of suicide is being practiced, thus making it impossible to track abuses;
• it contains absolutely no safeguards against coercion or abuse once the lethal drugs are in the patient’s possession; and
• it contains no residency requirement, opening the door to out-of-state visitors obtaining deadly drugs here.
Rather than assisting suicide, we believe government should be consistent in its efforts to prevent suicide. It is illogical for the state to promote/facilitate suicide for one group of persons — calling the suicides of those with a terminal illness and a specific prognosis “dignified and humane,” while recognizing suicide as a serious statewide public health crisis in all other circumstances and spending enormous resources to combat it.
We urge the state to remove barriers and improve access to palliative care and hospice care for those in the final stages of terminal illness. Improved education and training of physicians in pain management, together with appropriate diagnosis and treatment for depression, would go a long way toward eliminating calls for suicide among the sick and the dying.
Without these changes, and with the enactment of this legislation, we believe there is serious risk that physician-assisted suicide will rise to the level of the most acceptable, and even expected, “treatment” for terminal illness. The mainstreaming of such an option will lead to further disparities in caring for our most vulnerable. We urge you not to allow that to happen.
We strongly recommend opposition to this legislation.
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