by Cory Franklin, spiked
The assisted-dying movement corrupts everything it touches.
For individuals and groups who support assisted suicide, their contention has always been that, as a matter of personal autonomy, people have the right to decide when their physical or existential suffering has become unbearable, and others should be available to help them take their lives. Many have availed themselves of this compelling 21st-century argument in disparate countries and jurisdictions. Whether the dying ultimately ‘benefit’ from it is a matter of debate.
That is no longer the crux of the issue. With willing physicians and a compliant government involved, the moral bonds of society are inevitably beginning to fray. A lawsuit developing in New York state illustrates one way those threads unravel.
The case centres on New York’s Catholic healthcare providers, consisting of several congregations of nuns, including the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, and the Little Sisters of the Poor. These nuns, traditionally merciful caregivers for the terminally ill, have filed suit in federal court, joined by several Catholic-run hospitals, to challenge New York’s recently passed Medical Aid in Dying Act (MAID), due to take effect in early August.