During the Christmas season, Christians of every faith celebrate life — specifically the life of their savior, Jesus Christ.
The exception this year is New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul.
On Dec.17, when millions of Christians were trimming their Christmas trees and assembling the manger with figures of Mary, Joseph, and the Christ child, Gov. Hochul, a baptized Catholic, rejected the teaching of her church that human life is sacred and surrendered to the culture of death crowd when she agreed to sign into law euthanasia legislation.
The assisted-suicide law permits medical professionals to administer “medicine” that kills terminally ill patients. Euthanasia is a term coined in the 16th century by proponents of “mercy killing” for people suffering lingering illnesses.
The New England Journal of Medicine has defined the procedure as the deliberate administration of a lethal drug to hasten death in a suffering patient. Opposition to euthanasia dates back to ancient times.
The subject was central to the code of medical ethics devised by Hippocrates in 400 B.C., and forms the basis of the Hippocratic oath, which to this day is administered to medical candidates during graduation exercises.
One part of the oath states: “I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked … not will I make suggestions to this effect.”
Antipathy to euthanasia is also well established in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
According to the Book of Genesis (9:6), “He who sheds man’s blood, shall have his blood shed by man, for in the image of God man was made.” And in Exodus (23.7), the law very specifically states that the “innocent and just person you shall not put to death.”
The Roman Catholic Church has always forbidden euthanasia and suicide.
Responding to the Stoics, Epicureans, and Cynics, who looked upon suicide as a noble act, St. Augustine wrote in The City of God: “For it is clear that if no one has a private right to kill even a guilty man (and no law allows this), then certainly anyone who kills himself is a murderer, and is the more guilty in killing himself the more innocent he is of the charge on which he has condemned himself to death… . What we are saying, asserting, and establishing by all means at our command is this: that no one ought deliberately to bring about his own death by way of escaping from temporal troubles.”
St. Thomas Aquinas postulated that acts of suicide and euthanasia violate the virtues of love, fortitude, temperance, hope, faith, prudence, and the legitimate prerogatives of the common good.
He further argued that it is an evil means to a good end when it is performed to escape suffering, shame, or an occasion of sin. In 1940, 1943, and 1948, Pope Pius XII condemned both compulsory and voluntary mercy killing for all reasons —particularly economic and racial reasons.
On May 4, 1990, the Vatican issued a Declaration on Euthanasia which states that “no one is permitted to ask for this act of killing, either for himself or herself or for another person entrusted in his or her care, nor can he or she consent to it, either explicitly or implicitly. Nor can any authority legitimately recommend or permit such an action. For it is a question of the violation of the divine law, an offense against the dignity of the human person, a crime against life, and an attack on humanity.”
Hochul’s euthanasia law is also an assault on the underlying values of the medical profession. The physician’s calling is to cure and comfort the patient.
Doctors are expected to relieve those forms of suffering that medically accompany serious illness and the threat of death. They should relieve pain, allay anxiety, and be a comforting presence.
To compel a physician to participate in an assisted suicide decision goes beyond his field of expertise. The doctor would be called upon to make moral and philosophical decisions on the value of a person’s life.
If the physician is permitted to serve as a public executioner, he can be suspect to pressures that do not benefit patients. Hospital administrators, government bureaucrats, social workers, and a patient’s relatives and friends could influence a doctor’s decision.
Finances and family pressure could become the basis of life and death decisions and patients could become the victims of animosity and greed.
To live with dignity until the moment of natural death, a chronically ill, disabled or dying person — like any human being — has the right to compassionate, humane, and medically indicated treatment and care.
Health officials have an obligation to promote and make accessible proper palliative care. Hochul, having rejected the teachings of her church, is abandoning the sick and elderly.
She has rejected the belief in the inalienable right to life, and the obligation to promote a culture of compassion, one which ensures that every person lives — every moment of his life — with dignity.
George J. Marlin, a former executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, is the author of "The American Catholic Voter: Two Hundred Years of Political Impact," and "Christian Persecutions in the Middle East: A 21st Century Tragedy." Read George J. Marlin's Reports — More Here.
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