Citing the Founding Fathers, New York Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul announced Wednesday that she would sign a bill allowing doctors to prescribe fatal drugs to patients if they have a prognosis of less than six months to live.
In an op-ed published in the Albany Times-Union, Hochul said that she reached a deal with New York lawmakers on legislation that would legalize assisted suicide. Hochul’s announcement comes after a diverse coalition of Christian, conservative, and disability-rights advocates has urged her to veto the legislation.
“Two and a half centuries ago, our founding fathers established a vision of a country based on limited government and broad individual rights that together protect rights of speech, worship, privacy and bodily autonomy,” Hochul wrote. “This is the context in which I have considered the Medical Aid in Dying Act, a bill to allow suffering terminally ill individuals with less than six months left to live the right to medical aid to speed up the inevitable.”
The Democrat-controlled legislature passed assisted suicide legislation over the summer, but Hochul asked lawmakers to make a few revisions. She claimed these revisions would “protect family members, caregivers and doctors” and “ensure” the legislation is “not misused or broadly applied.”
She said lawmakers had agreed to these revisions and would amend the bill to include them once they returned in January. Hochul then said she would sign the legislation.
“I have come to see this as a matter of individual choice that does not have to be about shortening life but rather about shortening dying. And I do not believe that in every instance condemning someone to excruciating pain and suffering preserves the dignity and sanctity of life,” she wrote.
Hochul’s announcement was condemned by the New York State Republican Party, which said it was a “profound moral failure.”
“At a moment when New Yorkers are struggling with isolation and mental health crises, she is choosing to tell the most vulnerable among us that their lives are expendable,” said New York GOP Chair Ed Cox. “This is not compassion, it’s abandonment. True leadership defends life, dignity and hope, even when it’s hard.”
Cox urged New Yorkers to back Republican gubernatorial candidate Elise Stefanik, who he said “believes every life has value and who will fight relentlessly for families, the disabled and the voiceless.”
A joint statement from the Bishops of New York State condemned Hochul’s decision.
“We are extraordinarily troubled by Governor Hochul’s announcement that she will sign the egregious bill passed by the legislature earlier this year sanctioning physician-assisted suicide in New York State,” they said. “This new law signals our government’s abandonment of its most vulnerable citizens, telling people who are sick or disabled that suicide in their case is not only acceptable, but is encouraged by our elected leaders.”
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Another group that opposed the legislation was the New York Alliance Against Assisted Suicide. This included groups like the Center for Disability Rights, Democrats for Life of New York, and New York Families Action.
“Even with changes, this legislation would still single out disabled and terminally ill New Yorkers for radically different treatment than other individuals experiencing suicidal ideation,” they said. “It would still transform physicians into facilitators of suicide. It would still undermine medical transparency by requiring false reporting on death certificates.”
New York would become the 13th state, in addition to Washington, D.C., to pass laws legalizing assisted suicide. Earlier this month, Illinois legalized assisted suicide after Democrat Governor JB Pritzker signed a bill that was advanced to his desk on Halloween.
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