Today in the Wall Street Journal, for the second time this spring, Cardinal Timothy Dolan writes an column against legalizing assisted suicide in New York.
We prevent suicide. That’s the normal human reflex. Except when we’re death-peddling ideologues or have been guilted by those advocates of medically assisted suicide to give in to providing early death because of their false insistence that it’s the merciful thing to do.
Today in the Wall Street Journal, for the second time this spring, Cardinal Timothy Dolan writes an column against legalizing assisted suicide in New York. (The earlier one was published by First Things online while he was in Rome.) After recalling a scene he witnessed of a suicide rescue on the GWB, he says:
Our government will marshal all its resources to save the life of one hopeless and despondent man. Yet it may conclude that some lives aren’t worth living — perhaps due to a serious illness or disability — and we will hand those despondent women and men a proverbial loaded gun and tell them to have at it.
Advocates say this is only for the most serious terminal cases — people with six months or less to live. But many controllable illnesses can become terminal if untreated. In a recent podcast, the Assembly sponsor conceded that diabetics could become eligible if they cease taking insulin, making their condition “terminal” by definition. We all know that depression is one of the five stages of grief, but the bill under consideration in Albany doesn’t even require a psychological screening before offering suicide drugs.
Even while talking about safeguards, advocates continue to push for expansion in states where assisted suicide is legal, such as eliminating the need for a physician to prescribe the medication or removing residency requirements. In Canada, a 2016 law legalizing this process initially looked very much like the New York bill. By 2021, Parliament expanded eligibility to those with “chronic” illnesses. It is set to be expanded again in 2027 to people whose only diagnosis is a mental illness. Assisted suicide accounts for 5% of Canada’s deaths and rising.
Advocates dismiss these concerns as sectarian. But while opponents include Catholic, Orthodox Jewish and evangelical believers, they also include disability and patients-rights advocates. Among the 21 Assembly Democrats who voted against the bill were numerous members of minorities, who cited fears about how poor, medically underserved communities would be targeted and the danger that unconsumed drugs could be sold on the streets of their districts.
Everything I hear out of Albany is bad on the assisted-suicide front these days, except when it has to do with the impact that disability activists are having. They are brave to take the time to speak out. But it is existentially personal for them, at any time.
As I’ve mentioned in our new pro-life newsletter here at National Review Online, Brooklyn-born Dovie Eisner wrote about his own vulnerabilities in the face of increased assisted suicide in America because of his physical disabilities, and he almost immediately had a medical emergency than has him at the mercy of others. (He wrote for UnHerd, and then an adaptation was published by the New York Post. The latter ran the weekend he was hospitalized.)
Mercifully, his parents love him — when I was visiting this week, his father clearly told me that it’s wrong to talk of killing a patient because his “quality of life” is no longer deemed worthy of maintaining. Dovie is not responsive, but also not known to be in pain, as he is being cared for. He’s teaching us a lot about what is most important in life, as we pause to see him, pray for him, and work harder to convince Albany to not make living more dangerous for him and others with physical or mental — or even emotional — disabilities.
As our cardinal in New York continues to have even more of a news-celebrity moment than usual (he’s made for media, with some natural gifts that stem from his authentic Midwestern Catholic family upbringing), on account of continued attention on our new U.S.-born pope and Dolan’s probable role in electing him during the recent conclave, I’m not alone in praying that politicians, uncharacteristically for our times. listen to Father (Tim) on this. Lives depend on them doing so.