Family learns hospice bed opened as father faced scheduled assisted suicide
A Canadian woman recounts her father’s 2023 death via Canada’s MAID program after repeated rejections of hospice care, highlighting the difficulty of securing palliative support. The family’s efforts to secure hospice or in‑home care were denied twice because his diagnosis was deemed insufficient, contrasting sharply with the rapid availability of assisted‑suicide medication. The father ultimately chose assisted suicide, and the family learned a hospice bed became available on the day of his death, underscoring a perceived loss of hope. The story coincides with Catholic ministries in New York challenging the state’s Medical Aid in Dying Act in federal court, arguing that the opt‑out system forces providers to participate in counseling and referrals. The case illustrates tensions between access to hospice care and the legal framework for assisted suicide in North America.
about 2 months ago
The story of Colleen De Vos and her father highlights how difficulties obtaining hospice and palliative care can push vulnerable patients toward physician‑assisted death, and it comes as Catholic ministries in New York contest the state’s new assisted‑suicide law in federal court. 1
Colleen De Vos recounts that her 85‑year‑old father, a Catholic diagnosed with terminal chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, died through Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program in 2023. 1
The family repeatedly sought hospice or in‑home palliative care, believing these options would provide compassionate support. Their requests were denied twice because clinicians said the father’s diagnosis did not meet hospice criteria, despite rapid deterioration. 1
When hospice care remained unavailable, a nurse practitioner discussed MAID with the father as his symptoms worsened. The family received the medication kit “in a cardboard box,” noting how quickly the assisted‑suicide process could be arranged compared with the prolonged struggle for hospice placement. 1
On the day the father was scheduled to die, a hospice bed finally opened, but he declined it, citing loss of hope. De Vos believes the lack of timely hospice contributed to his decision to pursue assisted death. 1
As New York’s Medical Aid in Dying Act takes effect, Catholic ministries—including the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne—have sued, arguing that the law forces them to counsel and refer patients for assisted suicide, violating religious‑freedom rights. Senior counsel Adele Keim of the Becket Fund describes the law as an “opt‑out” system that presumes participation unless one explicitly declines. 1
A federal judge issued a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law against the Catholic plaintiffs while constitutional claims are examined. Keim notes that while the Supreme Court and New York’s highest court have found no fundamental right to assisted suicide, there is a recognized fundamental right to religious freedom. 1
The Catholic Church teaches that assisted suicide and euthanasia violate human dignity and urges the provision of compassionate hospice and palliative care to accompany natural death. De Vos echoes this view, urging lawmakers to respect life as a sacred gift rather than granting autonomy to end it. 1
The De Vos family’s experience underscores a stark contrast between the ease of accessing assisted‑suicide medication and the barriers to hospice care, fueling personal and legal opposition to New York’s assisted‑suicide legislation on religious‑freedom grounds. The ongoing court case will determine how far the state can require Catholic providers to participate in a process the Church deems contrary to the dignity of the human person.
Investigate Catholic doctrine on assisted dying versus hospice care
Catholic doctrine draws a clear moral distinction between intentionally causing death and caring for a dying person until natural death. Assisted dying—when it means assisted suicide or euthanasia—is morally impermissible. Hospice and palliative care are not only permissible but strongly encouraged, provided that their purpose is symptom relief and accompaniment rather than the intentional hastening of death.
The expression assisted dying can be ambiguous. In contemporary usage it commonly refers to either:
Catholic teaching rejects both. The Catechism defines direct euthanasia as putting an end to the lives of sick, dying, or disabled persons, regardless of the motives or methods. An action or omission that causes death in order to eliminate suffering is described as gravely contrary to human dignity and respect for God, the Creator.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith gives the underlying moral principle:
“Euthanasia is an action or an omission which of itself or by intention causes death, in order that all pain may in this way be eliminated.”
The decisive issue is therefore not simply whether the patient is suffering, whether the request is voluntary, or whether the act is legally permitted. The decisive issue is what is being chosen: the direct causing of death as the means of removing suffering. The CDF teaches that euthanasia is intrinsically evil—wrong in itself—and cannot be justified by a compassionate motive, personal autonomy, medical prognosis, or perceived quality of life.
Evangelium Vitae applies the same principle to assisted suicide. It teaches that assisting another person’s suicide means cooperating in an injustice, even when the person requests it. The Church’s objection is not that the person’s suffering is unreal or that the request should be dismissed. Rather, the response must be transformed from helping someone die into helping someone live and be accompanied through dying.
This is why the USCCB describes the purposeful taking of human life through assisted suicide or euthanasia as:
“not an act of mercy, but an unjustifiable assault on human life.”
The Church also recognizes that a person who requests death may be experiencing fear, depression, loneliness, inadequate pain control, financial anxiety, or the belief that he or she has become a burden. These circumstances call for intensified care, not abandonment. Catholic health-care directives state that dying patients who request euthanasia should receive loving care, psychological and spiritual support, and appropriate treatment for pain and other symptoms.
Catholic moral theology evaluates an act partly by its moral object—what is actually chosen—and not only by its consequences. Two actions may produce a similar physical result while having different moral meanings.
For example:
The Church therefore rejects the claim that every death following medication is euthanasia. The relevant question is: Was death intended as the end or as the means, or was it merely foreseen as an unintended side effect of legitimate symptom relief?
Evangelium Vitae teaches that narcotics may be used to relieve pain even when they risk reducing consciousness or shortening life, provided that death is neither sought nor intended. At the same time, the document cautions that consciousness should not be removed without a serious reason, since dying persons should ordinarily have the opportunity to fulfill moral and family responsibilities and prepare for their meeting with God.
This is commonly explained through the principle of double effect: a good act—relieving otherwise uncontrolled suffering—may have a foreseen but unintended harmful side effect. The harmful effect must not be the means by which the good effect is achieved.
Hospice care is fundamentally different from assisted dying. Hospice does not seek to cause death. It seeks to care for a person whose illness is terminal or approaching its final stage by addressing the whole person:
The USCCB calls for “effective and compassionate palliative care and hospice care,” describing the end of life as a holy moment requiring reverence and accompaniment.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith emphasizes the importance of both family and hospice:
“Next to the family, hospice centers which welcome the terminally sick and ensure their care until the last moment of life provide an important and valuable service.”
Hospice is therefore not a form of abandonment or a “home for the dying” in the pejorative sense. Saint John Paul II described hospice as a place where the final phase of life can be lived consciously and individually—a “threshold of hope” rather than merely a facility for managing death.
Pope Francis similarly describes authentic palliative care as a concrete sign of closeness and solidarity. It helps patients and families accept human vulnerability and finitude while affirming the person’s inviolable dignity. He expressly contrasts this with euthanasia:
“Authentic palliative care is radically different from euthanasia, which is never a source of hope or genuine concern for the sick and dying.”
The distinction can be summarized as follows:
| Assisted suicide or euthanasia | Hospice and palliative care |
|---|---|
| Intends or directly causes death | Accepts death when it naturally occurs |
| Uses death to eliminate suffering | Relieves suffering without intending death |
| Treats death as the solution to the problem | Accompanies the person through the problem of dying |
| Can imply that continued life has lost value | Affirms the person’s enduring dignity |
| Is morally impermissible | Is a work of mercy and charity |
Catholic teaching permits strong analgesics, including opioids, when they are medically proportionate and directed toward pain relief. A possible shortening of life does not automatically make the treatment immoral. The relevant intention must be symptom control, not killing.
The same principle applies to palliative sedation, in which consciousness may be reduced to control otherwise refractory symptoms—symptoms that cannot be adequately relieved by other means. Such sedation can be morally legitimate when:
Palliative sedation must not become a disguised form of euthanasia. The Church’s concern is not with the mere fact that consciousness is reduced, but with whether the treatment is proportionate and whether death is intended. The source discussing Catholic end-of-life ethics explicitly distinguishes the use of opioids and sedatives for palliation from administering them in order to hasten death.
Catholic doctrine does not require every possible medical intervention. It is morally permissible to refuse or discontinue treatments that are excessively burdensome, medically futile, disproportionate to the expected benefit, or incapable of achieving their proper purpose. The Church distinguishes this from euthanasia.
The moral difference is:
Thus, declining a highly invasive procedure that offers little realistic benefit is not equivalent to choosing death. Catholic ethics permits accepting the limits of medicine while continuing ordinary care, pain relief, human presence, and spiritual accompaniment.
Some end-of-life directives, including “Do Not Resuscitate” orders, require careful interpretation. The CDF has warned that such protocols were originally intended to avoid aggressive treatment but can create serious problems when interpreted in a way that neglects the duty to safeguard life or excludes patients and families from decisions. A DNR order is not automatically euthanasia; its morality depends on the clinical context, the treatment’s proportionality, and the intention behind the decision.
Catholic care for the dying is not merely an effort to prolong biological life at any cost. Human life is sacred, but medicine is not required to employ every technologically available intervention. The proper goal is care that respects the person’s dignity while recognizing that death cannot always be prevented.
Hospice creates space for:
Samaritanus bonus states that the Christian response to suffering is not merely an explanation but a presence that shoulders pain, accompanies the sufferer, and opens suffering to trusting hope. Pope Francis likewise insists that the dying person remains inherently valuable and must not be viewed as isolated or burdensome.
This is especially important because requests for assisted death may arise within a social environment that measures human worth by independence, productivity, or medical usefulness. Saint John Paul II warned that the elderly, disabled, and terminally ill can become vulnerable when society regards people as burdens or values life chiefly according to efficiency. Hospice answers this danger by embodying the opposite conviction: a person’s value does not diminish when strength, health, independence, or productivity diminish.
A Catholic approach to a terminal illness should ordinarily include:
Catholic doctrine rejects assisted suicide and euthanasia because they intentionally cause the death of an innocent human person, even when motivated by compassion or requested by the patient. Hospice and palliative care take the opposite moral path: they relieve pain, provide psychological and spiritual support, sustain family presence, and accompany the person until natural death. Their purpose is not to prolong dying indefinitely, but to ensure that the dying person is never reduced to a burden and never deprived of the care owed to someone created in the image of God.