Kathy Hochul insists that copying Canada’s assisted-suicide structure will help boost bodily autonomy. Tell that to several orders of Catholic nuns providing hospice, who now argue that the state will strip them of their practice unless they provide access to “Medical Aid in Dying” (MAID).
The sisters, along with other Catholic entities, filed suit on Friday, as the Free Press reports this morning:
A coalition of Catholic healthcare providers filed suit in federal court in Albany on Friday, arguing that New York’s new assisted dying law would force them to choose between their faith and their ability to provide care for the sick, the elderly, and the dying.
The lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of New York, names 13 plaintiffs, including multiple congregations of nuns such as the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, and the Little Sisters of the Poor. The Diocese of Rockville Centre and Catholic Health, a network of five Long Island hospitals, are also named.
Hochul insists that the law exempts religious providers from participating in MAID:
The bill, as passed by the Legislature originally included a number of protections in order to ensure that no patient was coerced into choosing medical aid in dying and that no health care professional or religiously affiliated health facility would be forced to offer medical aid in dying. The Governor worked with the Legislature to include additional guardrails that will make sure people won’t be taken advantage of, while still ensuring terminally ill New Yorkers have the choice to die comfortably and on their own terms, including …
- Allowing religiously-oriented home hospice providers to opt out of offering medical aid in dying.
The hospices can opt out of offering MAID. However, according to the lawsuit, the nuns are still required to cooperate with MAID, including providing information and coordination. The fines for refusals are steep, and New York can escalate by revoking their licenses and even criminal prosecution for hospice operators. And the opt-out barely exists at all:
The lawsuit asks the court to declare the Medical Aid in Dying Act unconstitutional and block its enforcement before it takes effect next month. At its core, the complaint argues the law violates the First Amendment by compelling doctors and nurses at religious facilities to counsel patients about assisted dying and by interfering with the Church’s ability to govern its own healthcare institutions. It also states that the law conflicts with federal statutes prohibiting the use of federal healthcare funds for assisted dying—a claim that applies to several plaintiffs who receive Medicare and Medicaid funding. …
New York’s law includes a provision permitting religious facilities to opt out of prescribing or administering lethal drugs on their premises. But according to the sisters’ lawyers, the opt-out is among the narrowest in the nation, narrower than similar laws in California, Oregon, and Washington, where religious providers can opt out of all participation if their faith requires it.
Even facilities in New York that invoke the religious exemption must still require physicians to counsel patients about assisted dying, assess their mental fitness, and walk them through every step of the qualification process on that facility’s premises—everything short of writing the prescription and administering the drugs.
Notice how Hochul uses the weasel word of “offering” as the opt-out. They are still required to act as agents of MAID, even though it violates their deeply held religious beliefs. Presumably, it would also violate the religious beliefs of their hospice patients, who freely chose Catholic facilities for their end-of-life care. It certainly violates the religious beliefs of the nuns who would have to start fronting suicide services.
Oh, and one more thing about Hochul’s “opt out.” The state has to recognize a hospice as a “healthcare facility” to receive it:
Some plaintiffs face an even more precarious position. The Missionary Sisters of St. Benedict, whose assisted living facility is not classified as a healthcare facility under the law’s definition, receive no religious opt-out whatsoever—meaning they would be required to allow the prescription and administration of lethal drugs on their premises with no exemption available.
What is permitted will be compulsory; what is not explicitly permitted will be suppressed by force. This is not about expanding ‘bodily autonomy’ and personal choice. This law vastly restricts the personal choices of providers while incentivizing people to rid the state of any obligation of service. MAID always starts off in heroic terms, and it always – always – accelerates into obligation, socially at first and eventually financially. It targets faith-based healthcare providers because faith in God threatens faith in The State.
Get ready for a big legal fight, and eventually a date at the Supreme Court. The death cult keeps trying, but the Catholic nuns keep fighting it on the front lines.
Editor’s Note: Hollywood, academia, and liberal elites are out of touch with the average American.
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