Empire State Governor Kathy Hochul is about to sign the assisted-suicide bill that lawmakers sent her way months ago.
It’s not surprising, but it is shocking and devastating all the same. Empire State Governor Kathy Hochul is about to sign the assisted-suicide bill that lawmakers sent her way months ago.
In a morally tortured op-ed this morning, she announced the legalization as in keeping with her commitment to the culture of death in New York — naming abortion as something she’s proud of — and inexplicably talked about “civil rights” as a precursor to killing the vulnerable:
Proudly, New York has long led the fights championing the rights of individuals, from civil rights to labor rights, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, and reproductive rights. In the true spirit of this country, government has a responsibility to protect, not interfere, with an individual’s deeply personal decisions.
Fighting the former Hemlock Society has been going on for the better part of a decade now here. There was no popular groundswell for assisted suicide in New York. It was all a targeted campaign from the ideologues of the culture of death — and largely behind the scenes. The debate, such that it was, was pathetic. Albany has been a disgrace and, if other states and countries are any indication — including across the border in Canada — “medical aid in dying” will only get expanded once it becomes law.
In response to Hochul’s claims that “guardrails” are being added to the ultimate law, the New York Alliance Against Assisted Suicide points out:
Proposed chapter amendments do not and cannot fix what is broken at the core. Even with changes, this legislation would still single out disabled and terminally ill New Yorkers for radically different treatment than other individuals experiencing suicidal ideation. It would still transform physicians into facilitators of suicide. It would still undermine medical transparency by requiring false reporting on death certificates. And it would still abandon the state’s responsibility to protect people at their most vulnerable moments.
For what it’s worth, the Catholics bishops of New York said this morning:
We are extraordinarily troubled by Governor Hochul’s announcement that she will sign the egregious bill passed by the legislature earlier this year sanctioning physician-assisted suicide in New York State. This new law signals our government’s abandonment of its most vulnerable citizens, telling people who are sick or disabled that suicide in their case is not only acceptable, but is encouraged by our elected leaders.
Tragically, this new law will seriously undermine all of the anti-suicide and mental health care investments Governor Hochul has made through her tenure. How can any society have credibility to tell young people or people with depression that suicide is never the answer, while at the same time telling elderly and sick people that it is a compassionate choice to be celebrated?
“While physician-assisted suicide will soon be legal here in New York, we must clearly reiterate that it is in direct conflict with Catholic teaching on the sacredness and dignity of all human life from conception until natural death and is a grave moral evil on par with other direct attacks on human life. We call on Catholics and all New Yorkers to reject physician-assisted suicide for themselves, their loved ones, and those in their care. And we pray that our state turn away from its promotion of a Culture of Death and invest instead in life-affirming, compassionate hospice and palliative care, which is seriously underutilized.”
The political becomes pastoral as the law goes into effect and inevitably gets pushed on people and their families in their most intimate, weakest moments.
And speaking of Catholic bishops, evidently Hochul will make a public announcement as the Vatican is expected to announce the replacement for New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who hit retirement age last February on his 75th birthday. Hochul expressed her sadness when Pope Francis died, and her op-ed today is full of a misleading cover of the trappings of Catholicism. Clearly, the Catholic University of America law school grad missed all of Francis’s passionate entreaties to protect human life and not throw it away when people become older or less productive by sickness or other challenges all of us will face.
(For the expected new bishop, Ronald Hicks, currently of Juliet, Ill., well: Welcome to New York.)
Illinois just went suicidal last week, not long after the Democratic governor got his photo-op with Chicago-born Pope Leo.
This new guy prepared for the priesthood as a missionary in an orphanage in Mexico — some of the darkest evils inflicted on children have long been close to his heart. It sounds like he’s up to the challenge of our state. But, sorry, there’s no honeymoon period. You’re all-in in our darkness. But Christ is our light, and that, mercifully, is really your job: To shine His light on a very confused and ailing culture.