New York to Catholic Nuns: Help Kill Suicidal People or No Hospice for Youhttps://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2026/07/20/new-york-to-catholic-nuns-help-kill-suicidal-people-or-no-hospice-for-you-n3817134Kathy Hochul insists that copying Canada's assisted-suicide structure will help boost bodily autonomy. Tell that to several orders of Catholic nuns providing hospice, who now argue that the state will strip them of their practice unless they provide access to "Medical Aid in Dying" (MAID).
The sisters, along with other Catholic entities, filed suit on Friday, as the Free Press reports this morning:
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.
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The hospices can opt out of offering MAID. However, according to the lawsuit, the nuns are still required to cooperate with MAID, including providing information and coordination. The fines for refusals are steep, and New York can escalate by revoking their licenses and even criminal prosecution for hospice operators. And the opt-out barely exists at all:
The lawsuit asks the court to declare the Medical Aid in Dying Act unconstitutional and block its enforcement before it takes effect next month. At its core, the complaint argues the law violates the First Amendment by compelling doctors and nurses at religious facilities to counsel patients about assisted dying and by interfering with the Church’s ability to govern its own healthcare institutions. It also states that the law conflicts with federal statutes prohibiting the use of federal healthcare funds for assisted dying—a claim that applies to several plaintiffs who receive Medicare and Medicaid funding. ...
New York’s law includes a provision permitting religious facilities to opt out of prescribing or administering lethal drugs on their premises. But according to the sisters’ lawyers, the opt-out is among the narrowest in the nation, narrower than similar laws in California, Oregon, and Washington, where religious providers can opt out of all participation if their faith requires it.
Even facilities in New York that invoke the religious exemption must still require physicians to counsel patients about assisted dying, assess their mental fitness, and walk them through every step of the qualification process on that facility’s premises—everything short of writing the prescription and administering the drugs.
Hospice care is NOT medically assisted suicide. Over-simplifying a little, hospice patients, by Medicare/Medicaid definition, have exhausted medical means of curative treatment for their disease(s) and are terminally ill, with a good-faith estimate that they have less than 6 months to live. Within that time, curative treatment is discontinued and hospice care focuses on patients' comfort during however long such patients live. Thus, counseling persons wanting medically assisted suicide and assistance in arranging this "service" is outside of the purpose of hospice care.
That Left Coast states have laws that
fully exempt religious institutions evidences that NY
intended to embroil religious institutions in a fight over First Amendment rights - religious free exercise and free speech.
