Pushback against physician-assisted suicide grows, seen as ‘winnable’ issue

Ken Oliver-Méndez   By Ken Oliver-Méndez for CNA

July 29, 2024 Catholic News Agency News Briefs 0 Print

 

Patients’ Rights Action Fund Executive Director Matt Vallière belongs to a broad spectrum of people — secular, religious, left, and right — who share the unifying principle that every person is of equal value and is deserving of equal suicide prevention care. / Credit: Ken Oliver-Méndez/CNA

Napa, California, Jul 29, 2024 / 09:20 am (CNA).

Despite the onslaught of legislative efforts to legalize physician-assisted suicide in many U.S. states, defenders of the disabled and others who oppose the devaluation of vulnerable lives are expressing optimism about the tide beginning to turn in their favor on the issue.

“If we hold back two more states that are still left in play, Massachusetts and Delaware, there will be three years in a row with no new legal states [permitting physician-assisted suicide],” Matt Vallière, executive director of the Patients’ Rights Action Fund, told CNA following a panel on the subject at the 2024 summer conference of the Napa Institute.

Vallière pointed to a number of reasons the tide is turning on the issue, including the growing number of “horror stories” coming out of Canada, where legal assisted suicide, dressed up by the euphemism “medical assistance in dying” (MAID), is rampant.

The proliferation of people being approved for assisted suicide and euthanasia in Canada due to temporary, solvable problems such as poverty and access to suitable housing, Vallière said, is causing people in general and policymakers in particular to reevaluate their stance on the issue.

“You get people who had a first blush understanding of what they thought they believed about the issue, and they’re thinking twice about whether or not this is good public policy. You’re getting outlets that have historically stonewalled our side’s voice now being concerned about it. They’re publishing pieces on our side of the issue,” Vallière said, referencing an editorial from this year cautioning against legalized assisted suicide by The Chicago Tribune, along with fresh reservations expressed by The Washington Post in view of the developments in Canada.

Such developments now lead Vallière and other opponents of assisted suicide, including his fellow Napa Institute panelists Life Legal Defense Fund CEO Alexandra Snyder and Americans United for Life (AUL) Chief Operating Officer and Corporate Counsel Evangeline Bartz, to express renewed confidence that the issue is a “winnable” one.

As Vallière pointed out during the panel, protecting the lives of the disabled and others who are vulnerable to committing suicide enjoys broad support across party lines. “It’s not a right/left issue where the whole thing has been pigeonholed,” Vallière observed.

Instead, defenders of those vulnerable to suicide share a “unifying principle that every person is of equal value, and they all deserve equal suicide prevention care and services when they’re in a dark moment.”

Bartz noted that this year assisted suicide bills went down to defeat in various states across the country, including in Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, Tennessee, and Wisconsin.

Americans United for Life Chief Operating Officer and Corporate Counsel Evangeline Bartz (center) speaks during the 2024 Napa Institute panel "Death and Dying: Assisted Suicide and the Most Vulnerable." She is flanked by Life Legal Defense Fund CEO Alexandra Snyder (left) and Patients' Rights Action Fund Executive Director Matt Valliére (right). Credit: Ken Oliver-Méndez/CNA
Americans United for Life Chief Operating Officer and Corporate Counsel Evangeline Bartz (center) speaks during the 2024 Napa Institute panel “Death and Dying: Assisted Suicide and the Most Vulnerable.” She is flanked by Life Legal Defense Fund CEO Alexandra Snyder (left) and Patients’ Rights Action Fund Executive Director Matt Valliére (right). Credit: Ken Oliver-Méndez/CNA

Instead of only playing defense, Bartz said proactive efforts are also underway in various states. Specifically, AUL advocates the enactment of state laws to establish there is no right to assisted suicide and protect against judicial activism that seeks to decriminalize assisted suicide.

Snyder observed that more often than not, support for assisted suicide is based on a “misunderstanding of what dignity is.” The panelists discussed how interdependence is part of the human condition and needing help with bathing or going to the bathroom, for example, is not by definition a loss of essential human dignity that should cause someone to give up on life.

Hopefully, Vallière concluded, laws permitting assisted suicide will eventually be eliminated because of their core devaluation of and discrimination against people who are living with disabilities.

The complete Napa Institute panel “Death and Dying: Assisted Suicide and the Most Vulnerable” is scheduled to post on the Institute’s YouTube page by mid-August.

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The Dispatch

Synod’s next steps? U.S. bishops look to Rome for guidance, say priests and poor need a voice

November 15, 2023 Catholic News Agency 17
Father Iván Montelongo, a priest from the Diocese of El Paso, Texas; Bishop Daniel Flores of the Diocese of Brownsville, Texas; and Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne/South Bend, Indiana, discuss the Synod on Synodality at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ fall meeting in Baltimore on Nov. 14, 2023. / Credit: Joe Bukuras/CNA

Baltimore, Md., Nov 15, 2023 / 13:15 pm (CNA).

U.S. bishops are hoping for further guidance from the Vatican before they formulate concrete plans to prepare for the final stage of the Synod on Synodality next fall.

At the conclusion of the synod’s first assembly that took place at the Vatican between Oct. 4–29, delegates approved a 42-page synthesis document titled “A Synodal Church in Mission” containing more than 80 proposals, including recommendations aimed at giving lay Catholics a greater role in decision-making.

The preliminary document did not, however, specify the next steps that dioceses and episcopal conferences should take during the interim period before the synod reconvenes in October 2024.

On Tuesday during the fall assembly of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in Baltimore, two of the synod delegates — Bishop Daniel Flores of the Diocese of Brownsville, Texas, and Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana — emphasized the need for an “executive summary” of the synthesis document to help guide continuing engagement with U.S. Catholics.

“When you think about it being a 41-page document, how are we going to consult people? Are they going to read 41 pages?” Rhoades said during a Nov. 14 press conference with Flores.

“At this point, I think we do need to identify exactly or more clearly what are the big items that we really need to have the input of the faithful. And I think that’s a work in progress because maybe the Vatican is going to provide those for us,” he said.

“We don’t know yet. If not, I mean, we have to get moving, so we may have to do it ourselves,” he added.

Flores agreed that the USCCB might have to produce its own summary if the Vatican doesn’t provide one soon. Asked if there was a timeline for when additional steps need to be taken, he said it was premature to formulate a schedule.

“To be honest, I don’t think we’ve gotten to the timeline stage yet because it is still fairly recent,” Flores said.

The synod’s synthesis document was the fruit of the delegates’ small-group discussions of issues raised in these listening sessions. The document calls for greater “co-responsibility” among all members of the Church and recommends specific steps to take and proposals to consider to achieve that goal.

Bishops: Not enough voices were heard

Pope Francis initiated the Synod on Synodality in October 2021, kicking off a multiyear worldwide Church effort to engage in listening sessions with Catholics. The faithful were asked to submit feedback to their local dioceses on the question “What steps does the Spirit invite us to take in order to grow in our ‘journeying together?’”

Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, had noted at last month’s synod that only 1% of Catholics participated in the listening sessions.

“One thing we have to do going forward is to encourage greater participation and invite people to partake and engage in this process of speaking, and listening and praying together,” Broglio said in October, adding: “That would be a source of growth for the Church.”  

Flores echoed these sentiments Tuesday, calling for a greater variety of voices to be heard as the synodal process continues.

“The voice of the pastors and the priests was not heard as clearly as we need to hear it, “ Flores said. “I think we all, as bishops, will get an encouragement to kind of find the vehicle by which, with their priests, they can reflect on what this document says as we prepare for going forward.”

“But they’re not the only ones. We all admitted that because it was our first sort of effort that we could do a lot better in consulting with the peripheral materially poorer. It’s because it’s hard, because you’re not always going to get a welcome,” the bishop of Brownsville said.

In his remarks, Flores said he expects to send some “resources” out to bishops and dioceses before the U.S. bishops’ conference in June.

[…]

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