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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.

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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CNA Staff, Jan 25, 2024 / 11:30 am (CNA).
A Kentucky bishop this month announced the dismissal of two priests who he said had repeatedly denigrated the modern form of the holy sacrifice of the Mass in their parish. Cov… […]

CNA Staff, Nov 13, 2020 / 12:17 am (CNA).- Catholic author George Weigel this week praised the heroic witness displayed by members of Courage, an apostolate that ministers to people experiencing same-sex attraction.

He encouraged them to stand firm amid societal pressures and recent controversy over comments from Pope Francis regarding same-sex civil unions.

“Brave men and women of ‘Courage,’ thank you for your witness. Please continue to take up the challenge that St. John Paul II issued on October 22, 1978: ‘Be not afraid! Open the doors to Christ!’” Weigel wrote in a Nov. 11 open letter published at First Things.

Courage offers resources to people experiencing same-sex attraction to help them live chaste lives according to Church teaching. Founded in 1980, the group today has more than 150 chapters in 18 countries.

“Your courage should inspire every Catholic to a similar fidelity, and to the mutual, prayerful support that helps sustain the integrity of love,” Weigel continued.

Weigel, who wrote the definitive biography of Pope St. John Paul II in 1999, noted that the “licentious” current culture can make living a chaste life difficult for anyone.

“Against fierce cultural and social pressures, you strive—with the help of grace, your pastors, and each other—to live the Catholic ethic of human love even as you experience same-sex attractions. Your efforts at fidelity bespeak deep faith, a powerful hope, and authentic love,” Weigel wrote.

Weigel’s letter was prompted by a recent controversy over a documentary film, “Francesco,” which features interviews with Pope Francis and includes a brief section in which, during a discussion of pastoral care of Catholics who identify as LGBT, the pope appears to offer support for civil union laws for same-sex couples.

The Vatican has since clarified that the pope’s comments do not pertain to Catholic doctrine regarding the nature of marriage, but to provisions of civil law in the specific context of a 2010 same-sex marriage bill in the Argentine legislature, which Pope Francis, who was then Archbishop of Buenos Aires, opposed. He had proposed the idea of civil unions as a compromise to avoid the legal redefinition of marriage.

Nevertheless, the pope’s remarks garnered praise from some Catholics who wish to see a change in the Church’s teaching on same-sex marriage, even though Pope Francis has frequently affirmed the doctrinal teaching of the Catholic Church that marriage is a lifelong partnership between one man and one woman.

Describing the pope’s comments as “cut-and-pasted by an agenda-driven filmmaker,” Weigel noted that informal remarks by a pope to a filmmaker do not constitute an expression of the papal teaching office.

Moreover, he noted that the Church’s teaching on what constitutes marriage “cannot change, because it is rooted in divine revelation and attested by reason.”

Weigel’s remarks echo those of Father Philip Bochanski, Courage’s director, who wrote a letter to the people of Courage on Oct. 22 in response to the pope’s remarks.

“[The] truth — that God has established a unique context for the total gift of self that is reflected in sexual intimacy — is rooted in the nature of the human person, in the revealed Word of God, and in the consistent teaching of the Church,” Bochanski wrote.

“That sexual relations are only morally good in the context of a permanent, faithful marriage between a man and a woman whose relations are open to having children is a teaching that cannot and will not be changed by anyone.”

Bochanski cited a 2003 document approved by Pope John Paul II and written by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI, in which the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith taught that “respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions.”

Even if civil unions might be chosen by people other than same-sex couples, like siblings or committed friends, the CDF said that homosexual relationships would be “foreseen and approved by the law,” and that civil unions “would obscure certain basic moral values and cause a devaluation of the institution of marriage.”

Bochanski noted that Pope Francis began his remarks in the video by insisting that people who experience same-sex attractions must never be rejected or excluded by their own families, which is consistent with the Church’s teaching that people who experience same-sex attraction must be “accepted with respect and sensitivity.”

“You members of Courage who make so many sacrifices as you strive for chastity, prayerful fellowship, and authentic friendship are a heroic witness to the world that a person doesn’t need to be in a sexual relationship in order to give and receive love that is sincere, loyal and fulfilling,” Bochanski wrote.

“I know that the media chatter over the last few days has left you feeling anxious, unseen and even rejected, but nothing could be farther from the reality. The teaching of the Church on these important matters is embodied and made clear in your daily lives. The Pope’s remarks about loving and protecting our brothers and sisters who experience same-sex attractions don’t detract from your sacrificial, heroic witness — they depend on it!”

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