New York’s new assisted-suicide law is set to take effect, but several Catholic religious orders and health care ministries have won temporary protection from provisions they say would force them to violate their faith.
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty announced that the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, the Missionary Sisters of St. Benedict, the Little Sisters of the Poor, and the Diocese of Rockville Centre will not be required, for now, to assist patients seeking to end their lives under the state’s Medical Aid in Dying Act.
The temporary protection came after New York agreed not to enforce the mandate against the Catholic organizations while their federal lawsuit moves forward.
“It’s a tragedy that New York’s new assisted suicide law is soon to take effect in the coming days,” Arielle Del Turco, director of the Center for Religious Liberty at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “In the shadow of this horrific new law, it is at least good to see the court uphold the conscience protections of Catholic nuns and several Catholic health care ministries who do not want to participate in this.”
Del Turco argued that medical professionals should not have to choose between their jobs and deeply held religious convictions.
“No health care worker should feel they must violate their conscience or lose their job,” she said. “And no faith-based health care institutions should fear being sued for not providing services that they believe are evil.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the Medical Aid in Dying Act in December. The law makes medical aid in dying available to certain terminally ill New Yorkers who are expected to have fewer than six months to live.
On July 31, Becket said a federal judge had entered an agreement preventing the state from enforcing the law against the Catholic plaintiffs while their case is pending. The religious groups contend that participating in assisted suicide would directly contradict Catholic teaching about the dignity and sanctity of human life.
Bishop John Barres of the Diocese of Rockville Centre called the agreement an important early victory for religious liberty.
“This agreement is an important first step towards protecting religious freedom,” Barres said. “New York cannot force the Church to answer suffering with suicide or abandon the sick and dying when they need care most.”
He added that the temporary agreement allows Catholic ministries to continue caring for patients according to their religious beliefs while the larger legal fight continues.
The dispute comes against a broader legal and cultural debate over physician-assisted suicide. In the 1997 case Washington v. Glucksberg, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Constitution does not establish a fundamental right to physician-assisted suicide. States, however, have continued to adopt their own laws governing the practice.
Supporters of assisted suicide describe such laws as a matter of compassion and personal choice. Corinne Carey, senior campaign director for Compassion & Choices NY/NJ, has argued that New York’s law is about “compassion, family, love, and respect for bodily autonomy.”
Catholic teaching reaches a very different conclusion. For the religious communities challenging New York’s mandate, suffering does not erase the value of a human life, and personal autonomy does not give the state the authority to compel Christians to participate in ending one.
Their position is rooted not only in conscience rights but in Scripture. Job 14:5-6 describes the days of a person’s life as being determined by God, while Romans 8 places present suffering within the larger Christian hope of redemption and eternal glory.
That theological difference is at the center of the lawsuit. The Catholic ministries are not merely objecting to a medical procedure they dislike. They believe assisting in suicide would make them participants in an act that directly contradicts their understanding of God’s authority over life and death.
For Christians who hold that conviction, compassion means remaining with the sick and dying, relieving suffering where possible, and caring for patients until natural death. It does not mean deliberately bringing life to an end.
