Bishop Arthur J. Serratelli

On March 25, 2019, both the New Jersey Senate and Assembly passed the Aid in Dying for the Terminally Ill Act. This means that, just as in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Montana, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and Washington, D.C., physicians can now help someone kill themselves. Legally! Doctors now become dealers in death. So contrary to the Hippocratic Oath that states “I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrong-doing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course.”

How is it possible that the taking of a human life now becomes a good thing? End of life issues are indeed painful and complicated. But, medicine has come a long way in palliative care. There are moral and compassionate means to ease the suffering and pain of those terminally ill without killing the patient. But somehow our society is now embracing the culture of death. Why should we expect anything different from a society that allows mothers and doctors to kill our children waiting to be born?

Prescription drugs to end someone’s life are certainly less costly than the drugs and the care necessary to assist a terminally ill person. Insurance companies may be now tempted to promote suicides by denying or delaying payment for what costs more. Patients themselves may be tempted to turn to suicide to relieve their families of any burden. These are not good solutions to illness.

Compassion for the sick, the dying, the terminally ill, the depressed, the disabled and the elderly means valuing their lives even when they are incapacitated. Dying with dignity means surrounding our loved ones with respect, care and prayer. It never means permitting doctors to end their lives so that they are no longer a burden to us, to insurance companies or society.

Death is always a loss. And, suicide brings so much pain to those left behind. They keep asking themselves what they could have done to prevent it. But, physician-assisted suicide is different. It is a deliberate, voluntary and well-planned choice. In such a choice, God is pushed aside. People act as if God simply does not exist. Is this not the reason why people support physician-assisted suicide, why legislators vote for it, why some choose it? God simply does not enter into the picture.

We have become a me-centered culture. The individual is the ultimate judge of what is good and evil. The Creator of all life no longer has a say in their decisions. For the choice of a Christian to advocate or to embrace physician-assisted suicide is a practical refusal to accept the mystery of the Cross by which we have been redeemed and given eternal life.

In a time when moral evils are being permitted by human law, people of faith know that there is a higher law. There is a moral law given by the Creator that governs us. And, that higher law values every human life. It calls forth goodness, sacrifice and love and ultimately insures the stability of any society. When a society upholds physician-assisted suicide as a good thing, it has begun its descent down the slippery road of devaluing the human person. It is rushing headlong to its own demise. New Jersey is now joining the procession to Hades. And every good person of faith must now ask, “How did we let this happen?”