A Marine’s Legacy for Life Fighting Assisted Suicide in New York Can Still Inspire — and Challenge Us

Yesterday, as I mentioned in some temporary good news about nuns in New York getting a temporary religious-freedom reprieve from the state’s new assisted-suicide law, there was also bad news: Dismissal of an appeal from disabilities groups arguing that the law violates equal protection and harms people with disabilities (now, and elsewhere on your medical records).  

I mention more about it in The Lifeline today, and I also interviewed Matt Valliere from the Institute for Patients’ Rights about it. He’s part of a multistate effort to undo these laws on 14th amendment grounds.  

I didn’t get too much into it — it could have been a whole different, but related conversation — but Matt and I go back. He probably was the one who introduced me years ago to the late J. J. Hanson.  

You might remember J.J. and his wife, Kristen. He was a Marine who served a tour in Iraq. J.J. was diagnosed with the same brain cancer Brittany Maynard had. She was the young woman celebrated in 2014 for moving from California to Oregon to kill herself via medically assisted suicide. She was on the cover of People, and her death was a big, tragically unnecessary step in mainstreaming assisted suicide. 

By choosing treatment after being given a death sentence, J.J. lived longer than predicted, and he and Kristen had a son during that time.

After J.J.’s death during the last days of 2017, Kristen joined me for an event in lower Manhattan where we talked about hope — Michael Wear and Pete Wehner both came in from D.C. for it, too. All the room was speechless as Kristen gave her testimony about that precious, painful, unrepeatable time they had together that assisted suicide steals from people. (I so wish there was video of it — it was a real retreat of an evening.)

As Matt points out in the interview, most people who opt for assisted suicide are not doing so because of pain. It’s more often because they feel like a burden. The longer I live, the more I try to accept that we are meant to be burdens for one another! There’s work, but there’s also joy in that. A joy that is knowing real love. And knowing the giver is often actually the receiver — because really we are all receivers, from our Creator.

Anyway, with the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne and assisted suicide in the news, I’ve been thinking a lot about J.J. He not only fought for his days, but against assisted suicide in his native New York. (Although like a few other NY’ers, he found he had a thing for Florida.) Tomorrow, as you may know, is August, so it’s a little bizarre that I have a background of a snowstorm as I interview Matt. It’s a photo from outside St. Anthony’s Church in Yulan, N.Y., right after J.J.’s funeral Mass. It happened during a blizzard — that day I may have learned what a “whiteout” looks like in an Uber (the driver’s name was Angel, I kid you not). And on the way back to Manhattan, a few of us stopped in for a late-Christmas visit to the Hawthorne Dominicans.

Are there a few times in life where you find yourself somewhere that feels like it is a little window into the peace and love of heaven? That’s what we experienced that night.

I pray J.J. is praying for those sisters and every innocent facing assisted-suicide pressure as implementation goes live on August 5 here in New York and September 12 in Illinois.

Most of my discussion with Matt above — and the occasion for it — is about New York, but assisted suicide more generally as well.

By the way, the October after J.J. died, Kristen also joined me on a panel in D.C. Matt was there, a Little Sister of the Poor, and Ryan T. Anderson, who hosted, at the Heritage Foundation (of another day) — you can watch it here: “J.J. Hanson’s Living Legacy: Renewing Our Will to Live and Love Until the End of Life.”

There is much darkness — New York has a knack for doubling down on the culture of death. But light is not extinguished. And it is so beautiful when we stop to look and listen. Thanks be to God for the people with the courage to open their hearts to the rest of us on these intimate issues that become political issues, often adding to human misery!