If your policies spark lawsuits with ‘Little sisters of the poor’ and ‘Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm’, it’s probably time to take a long hard look in the mirror.
Several such religious orders are launching a legal fight with New York’s plan to import the disastrous “Medical Assistance In Dying” protocols to the Big Apple.
Religious freedom and liberty of conscience is not a defense against this law, either. If you refuse to participate in helping someone end their life, you could face criminal penalties, and possibly prison time.
In a courageous stand for faith, conscience, and dignity of the dying, four orders of Catholic nuns and several Catholic healthcare ministries sued New York on Friday over a new law that forces them to help terminally ill patients kill themselves in violation of their faith. In Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm v. James, Becket is asking a federal court to block the law before it takes effect on August 5, when healthcare providers who refuse to take part in assisted suicide will face crippling fines, professional sanctions, and criminal penalties.
For generations, Catholic healthcare ministries have been a refuge for the sick, elderly, and dying across New York. Guided by the belief that every life is a precious gift, nuns like the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, the Missionary Sisters of St. Benedict, and the Little Sisters of the Poor offer those nearing death expert medical care, prayer, and loving accompaniment until God calls them home. The Diocese of Rockville Centre likewise shares this commitment to care for the sick, elderly, and dying throughout Long Island.
Following their Catholic faith, these ministries cannot prescribe lethal suicide drugs, direct patients to obtain them, or help facilitate a patient’s suicide in any way. Yet New York’s Medical Aid in Dying Act (MAID) will force them to do exactly that. Beginning August 5, any healthcare provider who declines to prescribe suicide pills could still have to tell terminally ill patients about their “right” to kill themselves, help them meet the requirements for obtaining suicide pills, and direct them to a provider willing to prescribe the lethal drugs. Refusal invites significant fines, license revocation, or even time behind bars. Federal law forbids New York from discriminating against healthcare providers who object to assisted suicide, but New York has done so anyway. Becket is asking the court to stop New York from forcing these ministries into the impossible choice between their faith and their mission to serve—and to protect vulnerable patients from being pushed toward assisted suicide at their lowest moment. —Becket
Just how bad is it?
Yet the law does not merely permit assisted suicide: it also forces healthcare providers across the state into its machinery by creating a “Suicide Counseling Mandate” that requires New York doctors to counsel their terminally ill patients about the so-called benefits of killing themselves. Religious healthcare institutions, doctors, and nurses must now inform and counsel terminal patients about the “benefits” of suicide and qualify them for the drugs used to end their lives, or else refer them to a “willing” provider. Refusal invites significant fines, license revocation, or even time behind bars. In practice, New York is making it unlawful to care for terminally ill patients without also offering them suicide pills—regardless of whether the patients want them or not. — Becket (emphasis added)
In Canada, one in every 20 deaths is deliberate. The death comes at the hands of a doctor.
Does the death certificate reflect doctor-assisted-suicide? Of course not. It’s blamed on some chronic medical condition that had at best an indirect causal role in the life being cut short.
Just like some guy in a pandemic who dies in a car crash or drops dead of a heart attack or stroke, but the nasal swab comes up positive, so that death gets added to the big scary scoreboard CNN loved to run 24/7.
