Even the sky seemed to be weeping on a chilly, overcast June day. 

Albany, New York – “This is like 1969 all over again.” That was the very first thing that was said to me on Monday as I joined a crowd of people protesting the assisted-suicide bill the New York state senate was scheduled to vote on later in the day. The man was a physician who said he wouldn’t be able to sleep — or live with himself — if he hadn’t shown up. 

So there the doctor stood — God bless him — with his protest sign, hoping to influence someone. Even though we knew how the day’s story was going to end. Deep into the afternoon, after years of holding off a debate and vote on assisted suicide, the senators hadn’t even started on the floor about it. And yet, the “ayes” already had it — even though there were members who had reservations they were open about, even later in the day on the floor, about grave legislation, there was no popular groundswell for. 

And, what about 1969? We are in New York. The Empire State was among the trailblazing states developing a culture of death by legalizing abortion in 1970, even before the Supreme Court made it the law of the land by judicial diktat. (I’m reminded that Mary Eberstadt wrote over a decade ago in Adam and Eve After the Pill that the Sexual Revolution would have repercussions akin to Soviet Communism, so powerful it was in trampling on the human person. And so it was and is — and so it continues.) 

And so up in Albany, as we awaited what had for no good or just reason had become inevitable, we basically felt like we were at an Irish wake.

Even the sky seemed to be weeping on a chilly, overcast June day. 

One of my favorite people at the New York Capitol on Monday was a Franciscan friar who took the train up from Manhattan. I recognized him immediately — I’ve been to Mass with him and he’s heard my confession more than once. He’s stationed at St. Francis Assisi, centrally positioned down the block from Penn Station, with enough daily Confession, Mass, and adoration times to give commuters no excuses to not make time for any and all. St. Francis might more typically be known for their bread line, immigration ministry, and the occasional event — or Mass — directed at people who identify as LGBT. . . . Even though I run into many a fellow conservative on the confession lines there, most of us probably consider it one of the more liberal parishes. (I write that being adamant that conservative and liberal are terrible ways to describe Church matters.) “I don’t know if it’s liberal or conservative. We’re Catholic.” He told me the assisted-suicide bill is serious and dangerous, and he worries about the impact on the medical profession and on people who are already struggling with depression and other suffering. If the law says suicide is legal — and even preferred — who’s to say where autonomy to choose death should end?

Earlier this month, on a panel sponsored by Communion and Liberation in lower Manhattan, Dr. Lydia Dugdale from Columbia Presbyterian, and author of The Art of Dying, said that increasingly –— the uptick has coincided with the Dobbs decision that ended Roe v. Wade — her trainees, so doctors and nurses, want to know why there is any societal stigma against suicide. My body, my choice. During a recent talk on assisted suicide, Dr. Dugdale was asked by a young woman if assisted suicide would be an appropriate treatment for loneliness. It has been called an epidemic by the Surgeon General’s office.

Of course educated young people would go there because it would make for consistency. And death sure does seem to be our dehumanizing go-to as a matter of convenience. 

By around 9 p.m. Monday, the deed was done. The bill has to be presented to the governor. Kathy Hochul has some serious culture-of-death creds. She’s enthusiastic about our state being an abortion tourist destination and our doctors sending abortion pills to the states that have acted to protect unborn children’s lives — and women from having an unnecessarily dead child. 

And yet, Hochul recently registered her offense at Donald Trump for a stupid X-post of him as pope. As a Catholic, she found it “deeply offensive.” Okay. I can meet you there. Now let’s be serious and be Catholics offended by encouraging doctors to do harm and making zero sense when it comes to suicide. 

Or just humans with concerns about humanity — including our own!

One of the protesters at the statehouse Monday had a homemade sign that declared that it’s not suicide if it’s assisted. “Because words have meaning,” he said. Words, and lives too. What say you, New York?

Madame Governor?