This remarkable fellow spoke in April, 2016 at a "Forum" in Scarsdale about assisted suicide. Thinly disguised promotion of it actually. That's JJ with the microphone (seated next to Ed Mechmann). Hanson was fabulous. Diagnosed with a brain cancer, he outlived his initial prognosis by three years before dying in December, 2017. His wife Kristen is carrying on his work.
This is good news , but it doesn't mean assisted suicide cannot be passed legislatively. It simply means there is no right to suicide in the NY State Constitution.
From the decision as covered in the Journal News -
The court ruled 5-0 against the plaintiffs, two of which have died since the lawsuit was first filed two years ago.
"Although New York has long recognized a competent adult's right to forgo life-saving medical care, we reject plaintiffs' argument that an individual has a fundamental constitutional right to aid-in-dying as they define it," the court's opinion read.
Thanks to Ed Mechmann, Director of Public Policy for the Archdiocese of NY, for sending this around -
Incredible good news!! The New York State Court of Appeals has unanimously refused to legalize assisted suicide. Here's the decision: https://www.nycourts.gov/ctapps/Decisions/2017/Sep17/77opn17-Decision.pdf This is a gigantic win for the cause of human life. God is great!
A good, short summary. As the late Msgr. William Smith said "Before social engineering comes verbal engineering."
The current favorite of the culture of death: "Aid in Dying."
Excerpts below; the entire article is nine paragraphs.
Words also have the power to degrade the human dignity of born and grown people. A classic example is the pejorative term “vegetable,” referring to those with severe cognitive disabilities and impairments. Even the diagnostic term used to describe the condition of permanently unconscious patients—“persistent vegetative state”—is pejorative, perhaps the only explicitly demeaning medical term. (Why not use the perfectly accurate “persistent unconscious state”?) The V-word has the effect—and in some cases, indeed, the purpose—of excluding these human beings from the moral community and exposing them to oft-proposed forms of oppression and exploitation—such as allowing them to be used for live-organ harvesting and as subjects in medical experimentation.
We see the same phenomenon in our debates around end-of-life care and assisted suicide. The Dutch euthanasia practitioner Dr. M.A.M. Wachter, ethicist/director for the Institute of Health in the Netherlands, made this point explicitly when he appeared at a 1990 international euthanasia society convention. “The definitions build the road to euthanasia,” he stated, explaining that even the word “euthanasia” (“good death”) could harm the cause, because people naturally recoil from the killing act.
Thus, Wachter urged his audience to prevaricate and obfuscate: “Definitions are not neutral. They are not just the innocent tools that allow us to describe reality. Rather, they shape our perceptions of reality. They select. They emphasize. They embody a bias. Therefore, definitions constantly need redefinition.” This is precisely why the Hemlock Society, an assisted-suicide advocacy organization, changed its name to Compassion and Choices and now deploys the euphemism “aid in dying” in its media and advocacy materials.
The Former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey.
Austen Ivereigh is coordinator and co-founder of Catholic Voices in the UK. This article first appeared on its website
The letter from religious figures in favour of assisted suicide in Saturday’s Telegraph — among them the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey — presents a curious theological argument. “There is nothing sacred about suffering, nothing holy about agony, and individuals should not be obliged to endure it”, say the signatories, who add that helping terminally ill people to commit suicide should be viewed simply as enabling them to “gracefully hand back” their lives to God.
The first curiosity is their perception that religious bodies in the UK overwhelmingly oppose assisted suicide because they believe God wants people to suffer. Who says this? Not the Catholic or Anglican Churches, that’s for sure; they have constantly pointed out the need for more and more effective palliative care and hospice beds, precisely in order to not just relieve physical pain, but also provide loving care and support to those in their final journey. This is not something that the churches have merely talked about, but put into action: the network of hospices across the UK are the fruit of great energy and resources dedicated to the proposition that “last days are not lost days” (as Dame Cicely Saunders used to put it).
Indeed, the bishops’ point has consistently been that an assisted suicide would rapidly dissolve any support for this idea, by introducing the notion that a life which includes pain and suffering is less worthy of being lived, and of being protected.
The second curiosity is the attempt to create a theological justification for assisted suicide in defiance of the long-settled teachings of the Christian tradition (as well as other faiths).
Hit the link above for the whole excellent (short) essay.