NY archbishop joins nuns’ assisted suicide lawsuit
Archbishop Ronald Hicks of New York joined a lawsuit challenging the state’s assisted-suicide law. The suit was initially brought by Bishop John O. Barres, Catholic Health of Long Island, and four religious communities that provide elder, dementia, and palliative care. The plaintiffs argue the law could force Catholic healthcare workers to help patients obtain lethal drugs, with fines, professional sanctions, or criminal penalties for noncompliance. New York’s Medical Aid in Dying Act was signed on February 6, 2026, and took effect on August 5, 2026.
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Archbishop Ronald Hicks of New York has joined a federal lawsuit challenging the state’s assisted-suicide law, alongside Catholic healthcare organizations and religious communities. The plaintiffs seek protection from requirements they say would make them participate in obtaining lethal drugs, contrary to their religious beliefs. 1
The case was initially brought by Bishop John O. Barres of Rockville Centre, Catholic Health of Long Island and four religious communities: 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. New York Catholic healthcare ministry ArchCare has also joined as a plaintiff. 1
The sisters provide nursing, dementia and palliative care, while ArchCare operates hospitals, nursing homes, hospice and other services. Among its facilities are Calvary Hospital, described in the article as the only fully accredited U.S. acute-care hospital devoted exclusively to palliative care for adults with life-limiting illnesses. 1
Governor Kathy Hochul signed the Medical Aid in Dying Act on February 6, 2026, and it took effect on August 5. The plaintiffs contend that the law could expose them to fines, professional sanctions and criminal penalties unless they help patients obtain lethal drugs. 1
New York agreed to a restraining order on July 30 that temporarily protects the nuns and their ministries. Hicks joined the lawsuit on October 30, seeking the same protection for Catholic healthcare providers in his archdiocese. 1
We refuse to allow New York to force us to harm the very ones we’ve been called to care for. 1
Hicks said the Church’s commitment to caring for people in need informs his opposition to the law. In June, he had called it an “assault on human life” and said it ushered in “a new and frightening era” for New York. 1
The article also notes a separate challenge in Illinois, where Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago joined two Catholic religious orders and a pharmacist in a lawsuit over that state’s assisted-suicide law. 1
Catholic healthcare requires conscience protections against assisted suicide
Yes. In Catholic teaching, conscience protections are necessary because healthcare workers and Catholic institutions must not be compelled to participate in assisted suicide or euthanasia—even where civil law permits those practices. This is not simply a demand for private religious preference: the Church presents conscientious objection as protection for moral responsibility and as a contribution to the common good. At the same time, refusing to assist a patient’s death must not mean abandoning the patient; Catholic care calls for continued, compassionate support.
The Church holds that assisted suicide and euthanasia are morally wrong because they involve intentionally causing death, or assisting a person to cause their own death. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith states that healthcare workers cannot take part in such practices, even if the patient or family requests them, and that no healthcare worker can be compelled to carry out what the Church regards as a nonexistent right.
That moral judgment has a direct consequence for conscience: healthcare professionals remain responsible for their own actions even when civil law allows or requires them. Samaritanus bonus therefore says governments should recognize conscientious objection in healthcare, and that workers may need to refuse a human law rather than act against conscience.
“Governments must acknowledge the right to conscientious objection in the medical and healthcare field.”
The point is not that every person’s conscience makes an action right. Rather, healthcare workers should not be forced to perform an act they judge to be a direct participation in ending innocent human life. The Church grounds that protection in the moral importance of the act itself and in respect for human life—not solely in the religious identity of the objector.
The teaching is not limited to individual doctors, nurses, or pharmacists. Samaritanus bonus calls on Catholic healthcare institutions to maintain their ethical and religious identity and to resist economic or regulatory pressure to accept euthanasia. It specifically states that institutional collaboration with other hospitals is not morally permissible when that collaboration involves referring patients who request euthanasia.
This matters because an institution’s participation may occur through its policies or arrangements, not only through a clinician personally administering a lethal intervention. The Church’s concern is that a Catholic hospital should not formally support or facilitate the practice it is bound to reject. The U.S. bishops’ healthcare directives likewise state that Catholic healthcare institutions may never condone or participate in euthanasia or assisted suicide “in any way.”
Conscience protections, on this account, should therefore not be so narrow that they shield an individual clinician while requiring a Catholic institution to arrange the same act through a referral or institutional partnership. The Church calls for a clear, unified position by local churches and Catholic healthcare communities to safeguard objection in places where euthanasia or assisted suicide is legally permitted.
A crucial qualification is that refusal to assist suicide does not mean refusing to care for the person. Catholic teaching distinguishes rejecting an act intended to cause death from continuing to accompany and treat someone who is suffering. Samaritanus bonus describes the authentic response as humane care that preserves the patient’s dignity until natural death.
The U.S. bishops’ directives specify that a patient requesting euthanasia should receive loving care, psychological and spiritual support, and appropriate treatment for pain and other symptoms. The Church’s position, then, is not “deny care,” but “do not make death the means of care.” Its model is sustained service to the sick person, including practical support and structures of hospitality, following the example of the Good Samaritan.
That distinction is important in public debate. Conscience protections should safeguard the healthcare worker or institution from being compelled to participate in assisted death; they should not be treated as permission to abandon or mistreat the patient. The cited teaching calls for objection to the act alongside continued, genuinely humane care.
The Church’s argument also reaches beyond protecting Catholics from personal distress or professional pressure. Samaritanus bonus says the right to conscientious objection is grounded in an inviolable human right and is essential to the common good, because laws permitting euthanasia or assisted suicide, in the Church’s judgment, undermine human dignity and just relations among people.
That is the Catholic basis for the claim that healthcare requires conscience protections: a legal permission for assisted suicide does not, in Catholic moral reasoning, create a moral duty to assist it. The Church asks civil authorities to protect space for healthcare professionals and Catholic institutions to remain faithful to their understanding of medicine as service to life. The supplied teaching establishes this moral and institutional position; it does not determine the detailed legal rules in any particular jurisdiction.