c. 1996 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)-U.S. Roman Catholic bishops will mount a campaign against assisted suicide comparable in scope and intensity to their fight against abortion, Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston said Wednesday (March 20).

Law, chairman of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Pro-Life Activities, made his comments during a telephone news conference.

He compared the new effort to the bishops’ 1975 Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities, a wide-ranging strategy that put abortion at the top of the church’s social-action agenda in the wake of a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling making most abortions legal.”We (the bishops’ pro-life committee) are going to look at that previous plan and build on it,”Law said, adding that the anti-euthanasia effort will include grassroots involvement among the nation’s Catholics.

The church has always opposed euthanasia and assisted suicide, but the decision to move the issue close to the top of the bishops’ public policy agenda was prompted by a March 6 ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco.

The court, which has jurisdiction over nine western states, ruled 8-3 that a mentally competent, terminally ill adult has a constitutional right to use a doctor’s assistance to hasten death.

Supporters of assisted suicide hailed the decision as an act of compassion that allows the terminally ill to die without prolonged pain and suffering.

But Law said the bishops believe the ruling is”a harbinger of terrible consequences.” He pointed to a statement adopted by the administrative board of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops charging that the 9th circuit’s ruling”runs roughshod over important ethical distinctions, legal precedents, and the prevailing judgment of the American Medical Association and medical specialists who treat terminally ill patients.”This ruling,”the statement said,”poses a massive threat to innocent life and to American ideals of equal protection under the law. It creates a `right to die’ that threatens to sweep away all meaningful limits or restrictions.” The bishops’ pro-life committee met Monday and agreed to make the assisted-suicide issue a top priority. The new plan, Law said, is not yet fully developed but is”more than just conceptual.” Law said the church is ready to commit financial as well as other resources to the anti-euthanasia effort but he did not spell out dollar amounts.”Obviously, there will be expenditures that have not been anticipated”by the conference, he said.”One of the primary foci is going to be in our role as teachers,”he said.”How do we (the nation) address the underlying questions”such as issues of the dignity of life and the difference between not using extraordinary means to keep a patient alive and taking”active”steps to end a life.

Law also said the U.S. Catholic Conference, the bishops’ social policy arm, will at the proper time file a friend-of-the-court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the 9th circuit ruling.

The church’s 1975 anti-abortion plan was drafted after the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Roe vs. Wade. The church organized grassroots anti-abortion committees, encouraged church members to participate in anti-abortion marches and demonstrations, and involved itself in anti-abortion initiatives at the state and federal levels and in legislatures and courts.

In addition, Catholic parishioners have sent millions of letters and postcards to lawmakers opposing abortion, and priests have regularly preached against abortion from their pulpits.

Even so, despite the bishops’ highly visible teaching and activism against abortion, most polls show that Catholics, like other Americans, remain divided over its legality. For example, a U.S. News & World Report poll last fall in advance of Pope John Paul II’s visit to the United States found that two-thirds of Catholics said abortion is not morally wrong in every case.

Political realities have forced the church to mute its early support for a constitutional amendment overturning the 1973 ruling in favor of more incremental steps, such as supporting legislation to end federal funding for abortions overseas and for poor women in the United States.

MJP END ANDERSON