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Legislation to legalize physician-assisted suicide has been introduced in both houses of the state Legislature in the current session. The so-called “Death With Dignity Act” was introduced in the state Assembly last month, and a similar bill was put forth in the Senate late last week.
A lawsuit filed in state Supreme Court in Manhattan also seeks to declare the ban on assisted suicide unconstitutional under the state constitution. One of the plaintiffs is Dr. Timothy Quill, a Rochester physician. If his name sounds familiar it might be because he was the litigant in Vacco v. Quill, a case that wound up in U.S. Supreme Court where the justices in 1997 unanimously rejected the argument that New York’s ban on assisted suicide violated the U.S. Constitution.
This past week, Cardinal Dolan came out strongly in an interview in the Daily News, turning the “Death With Dignity” slogan upside down, or right side up, as it were, saying: “The real death with dignity, the real heroes are those who die naturally, who take each day at a time, savoring everything they’ve got. That is death with dignity.”
The New York State Catholic Conference, the public policy arm of the state’s Catholic bishops, stands prepared not only to be staunch advocates for the Church’s position but also to help articulate it by using technology and organizational skills to educate and mobilize Catholics.
As the conference states in its promotional materials, end-of-life-care for a loved one is an issue faced by every family at one time or another. To help Catholics negotiate the host of medical, ethical and religious questions to be faced, often in fraught settings, the conference has produced a high-definition video, “Now and at the Hour of Our Death,” and a new website (www.catholicendoflife.org) that together tackle many common questions and concerns.
Produced by Blackfriars Media, the video is short, at just eight-and-a-half-minutes, and is seen as a resource for Catholics not only in New York but across the nation as well. Kudos goes to Our Sunday Visitor for providing the grant that funded the website and video, which stem from an earlier booklet with the same title produced by the conference.
Make no mistake, supporters of assisted suicide have plenty of resources at their disposal, so it is encouraging that the Cardinal and the Catholic Conference have spoken early on this important issue. We don’t have to tell savvy Catholic New Yorkers that trends begun here, for good and bad, have a way of carrying forth across the nation. Now legal in just four states—Oregon, Washington, Vermont and Montana—the legislatures in several others are stirring, including the nation’s largest, California.
We don’t want New York to be a tipping point. Witness what happened after same-sex marriage legislation passed here in 2011.
One positive sign was Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos’ public opposition to the Assembly bill, which he expressed soon after the Cardinal’s interview was published. We’d also like to hear where some of our other key New York State political office holders stand on the issue.
Catholics are far from the only stakeholders on physician-assisted suicide. Edward Mechmann, director of public policy for the archdiocese, says in an article on Page 3 that the coalition fighting against physician-assisted suicide is standing up for vulnerable populations such as “people suffering from depression, people who are lonely, people who are isolated.” Another big ally is the American Medical Association, which is on record against physician-assisted suicide.
The fight has just begun. Whether it is fully taken up by the Legislature this session, there is no mistaking that Catholics must understand the basic principles behind the Church’s position so that when the battle is waged, we can be articulate promoters and supporters of our just cause.
