Cardinal Dolan slams NY assisted suicide bill that turns ‘healers into killers’

Simon Caldwell• May 7, 2025

New York’s cardinal has severely criticised a vote to allow assisted suicide across New York State, describing the proposed law as “a disaster waiting to happen”.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan said that the Medical Aid in Dying Bill would turn doctors from “healers into killers” and will put pressure on “the sick, elderly and the depressed to end their own lives”.

The Bill is “contrary to everything we cherish” and “a terrible idea” the cardinal said after members of the New York State Assembly voted 81-67 in favour of the Bill.

“It is a classic Pandora’s Box; once opened, its consequences cannot be contained,” he said, writing from Rome for First Things.

He said: “Doctors would be forced to lie on death certificates by claiming the cause of death was the person’s underlying illness and not what actually killed him or her – the lethal combination of drugs.

“Any legislation that requires doctors to lie for the record cannot be good for the public.”

He added: “It sends a message to our young people – who are already struggling through an unprecedented mental health crisis – that life is disposable and that it’s perfectly alright to end your life if you find it burdensome or feel hopeless.”

The Catholic Church in America, explained Cardinal Dolan, has a long and proud history in health care, opening the country’s first hospitals and caring for the “casualties of war, measles, homelessness, illness, violence, AIDS, and all diseases and ailments known to man”.

“State-sanctioned suicide turns everything society knows and believes about medicine on its head,” he said.

“Doctors go from healers to killers…This legislation doesn’t require doctors to ask people if they’ve contemplated suicide before or find out if they’ve ever been treated for depression, paranoia, dementia, anxiety, anorexia, or any other mental health condition.

“And nowhere does the bill say a medical consultation must be in person, meaning it could happen by Zoom.

“How is this compassion? Is it any wonder that insurance providers are often supporters of assisted suicide legislation, wanting to protect their bottom line from patients who might live an extra few weeks or months with proper care?”

Cardinal Dolan continued: “Elected officials have a duty to carefully consider the effects of the legislation before them.

“What is proposed as compassion for the suffering terminally ill, once enacted, becomes almost a duty, as the elderly, the disabled, and the sick feel pressured to end their lives and stop being an inconvenience to others.

“We’ve seen this happen in other states and countries that have enacted this fearsome legislation. Remember how abortion supporters’ mantra of ‘safe, legal, and rare’ was quickly cast aside, and now abortion is imposed, frequent and something to be celebrated. The same is true for assisted suicide.”

The Bill, sponsored by assemblywoman Amy Paulin and state senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, has yet to pass through the State senate where it will meet with robust opposition, though supporters are confident it will succeed.

The remarks of Cardinal Dolan come as the British government published a 149-page impact assessment of legalising assisted suicide in England and Wales.

The report predicted that if Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill became law, more than 4,500 patients each year would initially commit suicide with the assistance of medics.

It said £90 million could be consequently saved in the first decade, with £59.6 million shaved off NHS expenditure and state pension payments reduced by £18.3 million.

MPs will gather for the Report Stage of the Bill on 16 May before voting a final time at Third Reading, after which, if passed, the Bill will progress without hindrance into law.

The bishops of England and Wales are deeply opposed to the Bill, describing it as “deeply flawed”, and have urged Catholics to write again and without delay to their MPs to ask them to reject it.

Photo: Archbishop of New York cardinal Timothy Dolan presides over a Mass in his own titular Church ‘Nostra Signora di Guadalupe a Monte Mario’ at the northern outskirts of Rome on May 04, 2025 in Rome, Italy. (Photo by Franco Origlia/Getty Images)