If you want to “Thelma and Louise it” (the end of the movie, not all the stuff before that), there’s not much to stop you, and I mean that metaphorically. Though I suppose you could do a reenactment, which – aside from ruining a perfectly good 1966 Ford Thunderbird – would bring out the advocates of assisted suicide to claim this is why we need it. As if a few hours of emergency services every now and again is more expensive than maintaining an entire bureaucracy pretending to ensure those with the power to assist you with dying aren’t abusing the privilege.
The former will always be less expensive than the latter, and history, distant and recent, tells us what we should already know. Mistakes, abuse, and mission creep will turn what was marketed as compassion for the terminally ill (some conditions initially apply) into a way for government to solve problems it almost certainly created.
No need to go into details here; there are something like 200 pieces of content on the site that already cover all of that. Today’s ‘episode’ of don’t let the government convince you to let them kill you comes courtesy of New York State. A beautiful place being ruined by progressive mismanagement that will begin killing its citizens “legally” on August 5th.
August 4th, Barry “no death panels” Obama’s birthday, would have been more appropriate, in my view. Remember when the proglodytes would make cakes and take pictures to share with their proglodyte followers on anti-social media? I wonder if any of them still do that?
New York will let “health care professionals” convince you how much cheaper it would be for everyone if you just killed yourself. A circumstance that will grow to include as many things as they can crowd in and that will affect people on publicly backed health care more than any other.
Pro tip – If you’re too expensive to treat, the government could give you a pain pill, as Barry said back in the day, or you could take these other pills and put yourself out of their misery.
Like all assisted suicide laws, this one will creep and be abused, and the pricey system meant to police it will suck and fail where failure results in death, and gee, we’re sorry about that, but there’s nothing we can do.
You could have spent the buckets of money you earmarked on the bureaucracy for quality end-of-life care, but nooooo. New York’s helpy suicide law is also particularly galling for an entirely different reason. It murdered religious conscience rights before suiciding anyone.
According to the Becket Fund, which has taken the lead in federal litigation, the law says that “any healthcare provider [in the state] who declines to prescribe suicide pills could still have to tell terminally ill patients about their ‘right’ to kill themselves, help them meet the requirements for obtaining suicide pills, and direct them to a provider willing to prescribe the lethal drugs. Refusal invites significant fines, license revocation, or even time behind bars.”
Nuns who provide health care of any kind would be required to follow the law or be fined or imprisoned. So much for the lefty mantra, “Be You,” which anyone with any sense understood to mean be you as long as that includes supporting everything that matters to us. Us being the progressive industrial complex.
Suicide is a mortal sin in the Catholic Church, so forcing nuns to give directions has rightly run afoul of the First Amendment. Whether you can find a court in New York to agree seems unlikely, which means this will have to climb all the way to the US Supreme Court, where only Ketanji Brown Jackson can’t see the problem clearly, though it’s possible, however unlikely, that being around more qualified peers could massage some of the stupid out of the dumb justice.
Don’t hold your breath.
As for the nuns and related religious groups engaged in “health care,” “U.S. District Judge Anne Nardacci sided with the Carmelite Sisters and other religious healthcare organizations to temporarily shield them from the enforcement of the law while their constitutional lawsuit proceeds.”
New York can still kill you; they just can’t make nuns help you help them do that.
Cue the old “I Love New York” ditty, except with the words “Death by New York.” It totally works, and you can use it with the unlawful deaths that happen from time to time. Remember the summer of love NY travel warnings because of all the crime and murder. We do.
Death, by New York!
And all my previous objections still apply. Never let the government decide that people can help you commit suicide or who they can help kill. Bad for human liberty, flourishing, and all that. And if you’ve been paying attention, governments that adopt assisted suicide are a lot like the end of the movie Thelma and Louise, except you’re the one behind the wheel, and they’re “driving” you into the Grand Canyon.
