Assisted suicide in New York: a court exempts Catholic nuns

A United States federal court has provisionally exempted Catholic nuns and their care homes from New York State's new assisted-suicide law, which took effect on 5 August 2026. The order, issued on 30 July, bars the State from compelling the plaintiffs while the case proceeds.

The law of God admits no exception here. The fifth commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," forbids the taking of life, another's as well as one's own: God alone is master of life and death, and man holds his own life only in trust. To take one's life, or to lend a hand to it, is a grave sin against charity, against oneself, and against the sovereign dominion of the Creator. To compel a religious to prescribe the poison, or to steer the sick toward one who will prescribe it, is to command her to cooperate in a homicide: no human power holds that authority, and obedience to such a law would itself be a fault.

The law, signed in February 2026, allows a terminally ill adult, given six months or less to live, to obtain a prescription to end his life. It obliges every caregiver to present the patient with all the options, including assisted suicide, and, if the patient asks, to prescribe the lethal substances or to transfer him to a practitioner willing to do so. Brought to court on 17 July on behalf of religious orders, it was suspended on 30 July by a consent order, accepted by the State itself, which federal judge Anne M. Naracci issued against its application to the plaintiffs.

Four communities are named — the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, the Missionary Sisters of St. Benedict, and the Little Sisters of the Poor — joined by the Diocese of Rockville Centre and a Catholic hospital network. The Carmelites alone run nineteen facilities in eight states and one in Ireland, six of them in New York. Mother Mary Rose Heery, prioress general, recalls: "Families entrust their loved ones to us because they know our homes will be places of tenderness, dignity, and faithful care."

Outside the reach of the order, anyone who refuses to obey risks losing his license or his facility's authorization, and even imprisonment. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia have already legalized assisted suicide. The rest of the procedure remains uncertain: one clock sets 20 August for the awaited response of the State's attorney general, another 8 September for the State's reply and 15 September for the sisters'. Mark Rienzi, president of the organization that represents them, sums up: "Forcing Catholic nuns to participate in suicide—and robbing New Yorkers of the choice to receive faithful, life-affirming care—is both unlawful and unjust."

Sources. Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), on the fifth commandment, "Thou shalt not kill"; Exodus 20:13 and Deuteronomy 5:17 (Douay-Rheims, from the Vulgate). St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, IIa-IIae, q. 64, a. 5, on the unlawfulness of taking one's own life and of lending a hand to homicide.