A coalition of Catholic healthcare providers filed suit in federal court in Albany on Friday, arguing that New York’s new assisted dying law would force them to choose between their faith and their ability to provide care for the sick, the elderly, and the dying.
The lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of New York, names 13 plaintiffs, including multiple congregations of nuns such as the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, and the Little Sisters of the Poor. The Diocese of Rockville Centre and Catholic Health, a network of five Long Island hospitals, are also named.
New York’s Medical Aid in Dying Act, signed into law in February and set to take effect August 5, allows terminally ill patients with a prognosis of six months or less to request drugs to end their lives. Governor Kathy Hochul called it a matter of bodily autonomy when she signed the bill. “New Yorkers deserve the choice to endure less suffering, not by shortening their lives, but by shortening their deaths,” she said.
The law works in tandem with an existing New York statute, the Palliative Care Information Act, which requires doctors and nurse practitioners to inform terminally ill patients of all their end-of-life options. Now that assisted dying is one of them, medical professionals must proactively raise it with patients—whether or not the patient asks.
