The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne exist to love patients in their Rosary Hill Home in the suburbs of New York City as Christ himself. As assisted suicide goes into effect in Kathy Hochul's Empire State, that seems to mean: to crucify him again.
Day One for the euphemistically named Medical Aid in Dying (MAID) law is Aug. 5. Unless attempts to have the law halted or declared unconstitutional are successful, it puts the Catholic nuns in an impossible position: presenting and participating in assisted suicide as an option for their patients.
The Hawthorne Dominicans have a 42-bed nursing home where they provide free care for patients dying of cancer. They've been in operation for 125 years since the community was founded by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, the daughter of the novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne. Rose was a convert to Catholicism and took the religious name Mother Mary Alphonsa upon founding her community.
She started out with two rooms on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. As the ministry grew and the Rosary Hill Home was established in 1901, Mother Mary Alphonsa established that the sisters "must make our guests glad they crossed the threshold that is to be their last boundary. We must make them as comfortable and happy as if their own people had kept them and put them into the very best bedroom." Their home offers palliative care to cancer patients who have exhausted treatment options or opted for none and are in financial need.
The sisters believe assisted suicide is evil, as the Catholic Church does. To participate in it would be evil and a scandal—regardless of what New York state mandates.
The Hawthorne Dominicans, along with three other groups of nuns, a Catholic bishop, a diocese and a Catholic healthcare system, are pleading with New York to halt the implementation of the law and to declare it unconstitutional—or at the very least to exempt them from the mandates in it that are simply impossible for them to follow. Becket, a religious liberty nonprofit law firm, is representing the plaintiffs in New York.
The New York law goes beyond states well-known for their extremism on assisted suicide. Unlike California, Oregon and Washington state, New York "requires doctors to affirmatively raise assisted suicide with their terminally ill patients," Becket indicates in its complaint. "New York's religious exemptions are also among the narrowest in the nation." Those aforementioned states also "allow religious healthcare providers and facilities to opt out of all participation in assisted suicide, if that is what their faith requires." In New York under MAID, however, "[t]he many New York nurse practitioners, doctors, mental health professionals, hospitals, and care homes with religious or moral objections to participating in assisted suicide will have nowhere to go."
None of this is constitutional. It violates the First Amendment five times over, Becket argues.
If America 250 means anything, it means nuns in New York cannot be coerced into participating in the evil of assisted suicide. Will the Empire State protect their religious freedom—and the freedom of patients and families who want their truly Catholic care—or punish them for serving God and the suffering with loving freedom?
Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review magazine and author of the new book "A Year With the Mystics: Visionary Wisdom for Daily Living." She is also chair of Cardinal Dolans pro-life commission in New York and is on the board of the University of Mary. She can be contacted at klopez@nationalreview.com.
Editor’s Note: Do you enjoy Townhall’s conservative reporting that takes on the radical Left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth.
Join Townhall VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member