New York backs off forcing nuns to participate in assisted suicide as lawsuit proceeds
State agrees to temporary restraining order on law that provides little to no exceptions for religious orders that provide end-of-life care, could threaten their federal funding, after emergency hearing.
A nun looks through the program of the Solemn Vespers evening prayer at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York
New York agreed to not enforce its assisted suicide law that ropes in Catholic nuns who provide care to terminally ill patients, which was scheduled to take effect next week, days before a scheduled emergency hearing.
US District Judge Anne Nardacci approved a consent order for temporary restraining order, dated Thursday but made public by the nuns' lawyers Friday morning.
"During the period of the temporary restraining order Defendants' are barred from requiring that Plaintiffs, their medical providers, employees, clinical contractors, and any others acting on Plaintiffs’ behalf or providing care to patients or residents on Plaintiffs” premises," undertake several actions, the order says.
Those include creating and enforcing policies on "providing information and counseling" about "medical aid in dying," referring patients to other medical providers for assisted suicide, evaluating and assisting patients to qualify for ending their lives, falsifying patient deaths as the result of their illness rather than MAID, permitting prescription or self-administration of life-ending drugs in their facilities, or punishing employees for complying with the law.
The parties adopted a new briefing schedule: Aug. 20 for New York to oppose the emergency motion, Sept. 8 for the nuns' response, and Sept. 15 for the state's reply to the nuns' response.
"There is a tendency in our society to treat the elderly as if they are a burden," said Mother Alice Marie Monica of Little Sisters of the Poor, perhaps the best-known order in decades of legal challenges to conscience-violating laws related to human life.
"This temporary protection allows us to keep showing them that they are wanted, loved, and precious in God’s eyes," she said.
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