Bishop John Barres of Rockville Centre, New York, and four women’s religious institutes filed suit against the State of New York’s Medical Aid in Dying Act.
“Beginning August 5, medical providers caring for terminally ill New Yorkers will have to proactively inform and counsel their patients about their ‘option’ to kill themselves,” the plaintiffs argued in their lawsuit. “This ‘Suicide Counseling Mandate’ is far broader than anything required by states like California, Oregon, and Washington.”
The plaintiffs stated that the new law also created a Suicide Qualification Mandate, Suicide Drug Prescription and Ingestion Mandate, Suicide Referral Mandate, False Death Certificate Mandate, and Unfaithful Employee Retention Mandate.
“We will never submit to New York’s culture of death,” Bishop Barres said in a statement. “Assisted suicide is a grave moral failure that puts the elderly, the disabled, and those suffering from mental and emotional illness at risk of abuse and manipulation. Christ the Divine Physician calls us to accompany the sick and dying with compassion, not abandon them to death. The court should protect that millennia-old mission.”
The Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, Missionary Sisters of St. Benedict, and Little Sisters of the Poor joined in the lawsuit, as did the Catholic Health System of Long Island.