New York governor announces she will sign assisted suicide bill into law

After a months-long delay, New York Governor Kathy Hochul has announced that she will sign a bill legalizing assisted suicide in the state.

Key Takeaways:

• In June, S138 passed the state Senate and was sent to Hochul's office to be signed into law.

• The bill will allow a person to undergo assisted suicide if they have a terminal diagnosis with six months or less to live, have the approval of two physicians, and have a signed statement from two witnesses.

• Hochul initially seemed reluctant to sign the legislation, and sent it back to the Assembly for some amendments to be added.

• Hochul said she would sign the bill into law in January once the legislature makes the requested changes.

• Hochul's decision was announced just days after Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed that state's assisted suicide bill into law.

The Details:

In an op-ed for the Albany Times-Union, Hochul announced her decision, saying it was heavily informed by personal experience. Stating that she agreed with the idea of using assisted suicide to "speed up the inevitable," Hochul said she will sign the legislation into law.

The months-long delay had given opponents false hope that she might veto the bill instead.

"I watched my own mom die from ALS," Hochul wrote. "I watched that vicious disease steal away the strong woman who raised me as it took her ability to walk, to eat, to speak and, ultimately, to live. I am all too familiar with the pain of seeing someone you love suffer and feeling powerless to stop it."

Hochul, who says she is Catholic, also stated her belief that respecting the sanctity of life is not at odds with allowing doctors to participate in intentionally killing their patients. (Hochul, it should be noted, also firmly supports the intentional killing of preborn children by abortion.) She claimed:

"[A]s I have spoken with people tormented by pain, 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.

I was taught that God is merciful and compassionate, and so must we be. This includes permitting a merciful option to those facing the unimaginable and searching for comfort in their final months in this life."

She also said members of the legislature had agreed to put her proposed amendments in place, to ostensibly further ensure that conscience rights are protected for religious health care providers and to protect vulnerable populations from coercion, like the elderly or disabled.

She also said a five-day waiting period would be put into place, and that assisted suicide would be legal for New Yorkers only, shunning the idea of death tourism.

Despite these apparent safeguards, other countries such as Canada and the Netherlands have shown that once assisted suicide and euthanasia are accepted, they tend to be promoted by the government. Canada's government has exerted pressure on medical practitioners and others, urging them to offer death to patients whether those patients want the information or not. Canada has been clear that assisted dying is a cost-saving measure for the country, which has nationalized health care.

Commentary:

Amanda Achtman, founder of Dying to Meet You in Canada, said in an email that Hochul's reference to assisted suicide as "shortening dying" is "Orwellian." She added that Hochul "romanticized" the idea of assisted dying and "is also woefully naive about the so-called safeguards. She thinks that a five-day waiting period will 'provide the patient the chance to change their mind' and that 'a written and recorded oral request to confirm free will is present.'"

Achtman also noted that an op-ed from Hochul claimed, "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” — substituting "bodily autonomy" in the place of "life" as a right.

"... Gov. Hochul makes a stark moral inversion by insinuating that not allowing someone to kill themselves is actually what violates the sanctity of life," Achtman wrote, adding, "I think the Governors of Illinois and New York chose to sign these bills just before Christmas in hopes that the people who care most about this would be too busy celebrating life to be able to keep fighting for it over the holidays."

Zoom In:

Though Hochul claimed assisted suicide was necessary to allow people to avoid a long, painful death, this is not the primary reason most people choose to die.

The vast majority of people do not cite pain or fear of their disease as their reason for dying; in fact, data has found that it is the fear of losing autonomy and of being unable to enjoy the same activities as before that is most frequently listed as the reason for choosing assisted suicide.

Other studies have found that, additionally, people fear becoming a burden on their loved ones.

Assisted suicide is also not a guarantee of a peaceful death, as research has shown.