The New York State Assembly voted in favor of doctor-assisted suicide. Will the state double down on death?

How about some suicide with your Stridex?

Cardinal Timothy Michael Dolan — on possibly the most important week of his life — took the time to write an essay in First Things opposing the once and sudden push for assisted suicide in New York.

Last week, the New York State Assembly voted in favor of doctor-assisted suicide. New York would be the eleventh state in the union to legalize assisted suicide, if it goes through with this. And the controls to ensure that the practice is limited to last-resort cases wouldn’t exactly be the tightest. As Dolan writes: 

the prescribing doctor doesn’t even have to be the patient’s regular provider. In fact, the national group “Death with Dignity” tells patients they could “ask any kind of doctor . . . even your dermatologist” to write a suicide prescription. [Emphasis added]

This is insane. Especially considering — as Dolan points out — that suicide is a problem that New York has been working to prevent in other contexts. He writes:

The suicide bill comes as Gov. Kathy Hochul has implemented numerous highly successful suicide prevention efforts that are helping New York have one of the nation’s lowest suicide rates. Those programs are embedded throughout schools, pediatrician practices, hospitals, veterans and first responder initiatives, the 988 crisis hotline, and many other state and local programs. 

I commend Gov. Hochul for her efforts. But a new law that sanctions suicide while the state simultaneously pursues a policy of suicide prevention amounts to cutting holes into one side of a boat while bailing water from the other. 

Worse, it sends a message to our young people — who are already struggling through an unprecedented mental health crisis — that life is disposable and that it’s perfectly alright to end your life if you find it burdensome or feel hopeless. “Even one death by suicide is too many,” New York State’s Office of Mental Health declares. Why anyone in our government would want to contradict that statement is beyond me. 

Moreover, consider the timing of this push for assisted suicide in New York. Compassion & Choices — formerly the Hemlock Society — has had New York on its most-wanted list for a while, but it was only in recent weeks that legalized doctor-assisted suicide became a real possibility in the state. The passage of this law after a steady stream of tributes to Pope Francis would render them meaningless. It would demonstrate that New York missed the point that Francis had made about encountering each human life with mercy, not a perverted sense of it.

As Cardinal Dolan points out:

I was heartened by the outpouring of praise from so many upon Pope Francis’s passing. Paulin, the lead sponsor of New York’s assisted suicide bill, called Francis a “profoundly compassionate and forward-thinking leader” and “a remarkable Pope for the Catholic Church but a true moral compass for all people.” Gov. Hochul called him a “man of peace and a fighter for justice” and ordered flags flown at half-staff in his memory. 

Dolan added:

Pope Francis had much to say about assisted suicide in 2019: “[O]ne can and must reject the temptation — induced also by legislative changes — to use medicine to support a possible desire for death by the patient, providing assistance to suicide or causing death directly with euthanasia.” He called assisted suicide a “discarding of the patient” and “false compassion” — not, as its advocates might claim, an expression of a person’s freedom. New York and all our states can do better than this. Let us instead focus our formidable efforts on strengthening care for people at the end of life. They are finishing the race. Let them go with their hands held high, the way God and nature intended. 

There is no understanding Pope Francis without recognizing his commitment to combating our throwaway society that sees even human life as disposable. He met with the vice president of the United States and braved the crowds in Saint Peter’s Square on the final day of his life. He was far from his prime. He was sick and suffering. And yet his life had value. And he had lessons to teach us by how he was living — including by letting people show their love and/or respect for him. 

Dolan writes:

State-sanctioned suicide turns everything society knows and believes about medicine on its head. Doctors go from healers to killers, which is why the American Medical Association calls it “fundamentally incompatible” with good medicine. 

This legislation doesn’t require doctors to ask people if they’ve contemplated suicide before or find out if they’ve ever been treated for depression, paranoia, dementia, anxiety, anorexia, or any other mental health condition. And nowhere does the bill say a medical consultation must be in person, meaning it could happen by Zoom. 

How is this compassion? Is it any wonder that insurance providers are often supporters of assisted suicide legislation, wanting to protect their bottom line from patients who might live an extra few weeks or months with proper care? 

We are already doing telehealth abortions in New York. We’re already sending abortion drugs to other states by mail. Governor Hochul has long made clear that New York is an abortion destination, on top of its being the abortion capital of the United States. We all tend to agree that suicide is not a good thing. Let’s not get lost in euphemisms and obscure the truth: Physician-assisted suicide/Medical Aid in Dying is suicide. It is an attack on the vulnerable. In a state that failed to protect the most vulnerable at the early stages of the Covid pandemic — especially the elderly in nursing homes — how could we live with ourselves if we doubled down on death? Assisted suicide: don’t do it. And please, let Cardinal Dolan get back to possibly the most important week of his life in peace without worrying that politicians in Albany are eager for more death and less medical care for the human person.