RFI’s Nathan Berkeley wrote an article for National Catholic Register this week explaining how New York’s physician-assisted suicide bill should be opposed outright because the practice is “morally wrong, contrary to medical ethics, and appropriate for continued legal proscription.” The bill’s inadequate conscience protections for healthcare practitioners and institutions that object to it provide yet another urgent basis for opposing the legislation. He writes:

According to Death With Dignity, an organization that promotes legal access to physician-assisted suicide (PAS), 11 states and the District of Columbia have legalized the practice. The organization also reports that pro-PAS bills have been introduced this year in the legislatures of another 17 states. 

New York is one of those states. The State Assembly in Albany passed the “Medical Aid in Dying Act” in April, and the State Senate passed its companion bill on June 9. The bill now awaits action from Gov. Kathy Hochul. 

Legalizing PAS should be opposed in principle, regardless of the degree to which the legislation sanctioning it protects religious and other objectors from participating or otherwise becoming complicit in carrying it out. Nevertheless, assessing those protections in specific proposals is necessary. In many of these bills — including the one on Hochul’s desk — conscience protections are severely lacking.

Read the full article: “New York’s Assisted-Suicide Bill Puts Conscience Rights at Risk.”