NEWS STORY: Euthanasia becoming key policy item for U.S. Catholic bishops

c. 1996 Religion News Service PORTLAND, Ore. _ The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops are stepping up their campaign against euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow states to ban the practice and urging Congress to take action. Meeting this week in Portland, Ore., the first state to pass legislation legalizing physician-assisted […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

PORTLAND, Ore. _ The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops are stepping up their campaign against euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow states to ban the practice and urging Congress to take action.

Meeting this week in Portland, Ore., the first state to pass legislation legalizing physician-assisted suicide, the bishops underscored their opposition to euthanasia and the significance of their campaign against the efforts to legalize it.”The initiative held in this state of Oregon, which by a narrow margin legalized physician-assisted suicide, is a clear instance in which a democratic process failed to respect fundamental values, for which reason we continue vigorously to oppose its implementation,”Bishop Anthony M. Pilla of Cleveland, president of the National Conference of Bishops, said Thursday (June 20) in his opening address to the group’s three-day spring meeting.


On Wednesday (June 19), the U.S. Catholic Conference (USCC) announced it had filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court asking the justices to hear and reverse a 2nd Circuit Court ruling on assisted suicide.

And last week, the conference, in its first letter to Congress on the issue, argued that doctor-assisted suicide”will be a significant federal issue for the foreseeable future”and that federal lawmakers”must soon face the question (of) whether federal funds should be used to support the provision of lethal drugs to seriously ill patients.” The letter was sent to every member of Congress by Richard Doerflinger, associate director of policy development of the bishops’ Committee for Pro-Life Activities and their top official on the euthanasia issue.

Doerflinger, in an interview, said the letter was sent in anticipation of legislation being introduced in the House and Senate in coming weeks that would prevent the use of federal funds in such programs as Medicare and Medicaid to promote or assist euthanasia.

The right-to-die issue is emerging as a policy concern for the bishops with almost _ but not quite _ the status of their opposition to abortion.

To emphasize that point, the bishops late Thursday adopted a statement,”Stand Up for Life,”linking their opposition to a controversial late-term abortion procedure to their opposition to euthanasia, labeling both part of what Pope John Paul II called”the culture of death.” Still, the bishops’ opposition to abortion remains their top policy concern, as demonstrated by the fact that eight of the statement’s 11 paragraphs are on abortion. Included is a blistering criticism of President Clinton’s April 10 veto of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. The statement accused Clinton of supporting infanticide.”Congress voted to stop this shameful practice,”the statement said.”However, because the president vetoed the bill, partial-birth abortion _ more truly seen as a form of infanticide _ continues in our country.” According to the bishops, Clinton contends that the Constitution”forbids any meaningful legal protection for children who are almost completely born alive, and indeed that it should forbid such protection.” On euthanasia, the”Stand Up for Life”statement took issue with a New York state ruling and one by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that struck down Washington state’s ban on assisted suicide.”Such rulings devalue the lives of people most in need of compassion and care,”the statement said.”We must do all we can to help bring about their reversal.” The growing importance of the euthanasia issue was also signaled by the brief filed Wednesday in which, for the first time, the bishops asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a particular case. The bishops joined a broad range of groups in filing the brief. They included the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, and the Christian Legal Society.

The brief asks the court to hear New York state’s appeal of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruling. That ruling said New York may not prohibit doctors from providing patients in the final stages of terminal illness with the means of committing suicide.

The brief argues that the 2nd Circuit ruling”obliterated a distinction recognized for centuries in life, law, and morality”_ that between letting nature take its course and intervening in that course by intentionally providing a person with the means of causing death.”The 2nd Circuit’s extraordinary uprooting of this long-recognized proscription demands the attention of the (Supreme) Court,”the brief said. It asked the court to preserve”a basic precept of American life and government _ that no one may take the life of another even if asked.” The bishops told the Supreme Court that the ruling overturning New York state’s laws, if allowed to stand,”will have deadly consequences for people who are already marginalized in our society.”The poor, the elderly, members of minorities, and those without access to medical care _ these are the ones who will be killed,”the bishops’ brief said.


MJP END ANDERSON

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!