New York’s cardinal has severely criticised a vote to allow assisted suicide across New York State, describing the proposed law as “a disaster waiting to happen”. Source: The Catholic Herald.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan said that the Medical Aid in Dying Bill would turn doctors from “healers into killers” and will put pressure on “the sick, elderly and the depressed to end their own lives”.
The bill is “contrary to everything we cherish” and “a terrible idea” the cardinal said after members of the New York State Assembly voted 81-67 in favour of the bill.
“It is a classic Pandora’s Box; once opened, its consequences cannot be contained,” he said, writing from Rome for the inter-denominational journal First Things.
“Doctors would be forced to lie on death certificates by claiming the cause of death was the person’s underlying illness and not what actually killed him or her – the lethal combination of drugs,” he wrote.
“Any legislation that requires doctors to lie for the record cannot be good for the public.”
He added: “It sends a message to our young people – who are already struggling through an unprecedented mental health crisis – that life is disposable and that it’s perfectly alright to end your life if you find it burdensome or feel hopeless.”
The Catholic Church in America, explained Cardinal Dolan, has a long and proud history in health care, opening the country’s first hospitals and caring for the “casualties of war, measles, homelessness, illness, violence, AIDS, and all diseases and ailments known to man”.
“State-sanctioned suicide turns everything society knows and believes about medicine on its head,” he said.
“Doctors go from healers to killers. This legislation doesn’t require doctors to ask people if they’ve contemplated suicide before or find out if they’ve ever been treated for depression, paranoia, dementia, anxiety, anorexia, or any other mental health condition.
“And nowhere does the bill say a medical consultation must be in person, meaning it could happen by Zoom.”
Cardinal Dolan’s remarks come as the British government published a 149-page impact assessment of legalising assisted suicide in England and Wales.
The report predicted that if Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill became law, more than 4500 patients each year would initially commit suicide with the assistance of medics.
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Cardinal Dolan slams NY assisted suicide bill that turns ‘healers into killers’ (By Simon Caldwell, The Catholic Herald)
