New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Wednesday that she intends to sign legislation allowing doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to terminally ill patients with a prognosis of less than six months to live, framing the move as an expansion of individual rights while drawing fierce opposition from religious, conservative, and disability-rights advocates.
In an op-ed published in the Albany Times-Union, Hochul said she had reached an agreement with state lawmakers on the Medical Aid in Dying Act, a bill that would legalize physician-assisted suicide in New York. The Democrat-controlled legislature passed the measure over the summer, but Hochul asked lawmakers to revise it before she would sign it into law.
Hochul said the revisions were intended to “protect family members, caregivers and doctors” and to “ensure” the legislation is not “misused or broadly applied.” She said lawmakers have agreed to the changes and will formally amend the bill when the legislature reconvenes in January. Once that happens, Hochul said she will sign it.
In her op-ed, Hochul cited the Founding Fathers as justification for the decision. “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,” she wrote. She said that framework guided her consideration of the bill, which would allow terminally ill individuals to seek medical assistance to “speed up the inevitable.”
Hochul described the issue as one of personal choice rather than an attack on life itself. “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,” she wrote. “And I do not believe that in every instance condemning someone to excruciating pain and suffering preserves the dignity and sanctity of life.”
The announcement immediately drew sharp condemnation from Republicans and advocacy groups across New York. The New York State Republican Party called Hochul’s decision a “profound moral failure.” Party Chair Ed Cox said the governor was sending a dangerous message to vulnerable residents.
“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,” Cox said. “This is not compassion, it’s abandonment.”
Cox urged voters to support Republican gubernatorial candidate Elise Stefanik, saying she “believes every life has value and will fight relentlessly for families, the disabled and the voiceless.”
New York’s Catholic bishops also issued a joint statement condemning 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,” the bishops said. They warned the law would signal the government’s “abandonment of its most vulnerable citizens.”
Disability-rights organizations also opposed the legislation. The New York Alliance Against Assisted Suicide, which includes groups such as the Center for Disability Rights, Democrats for Life of New York, and New York Families Action, said the bill would still single out disabled and terminally ill people for different treatment.
“Even with changes, this legislation would still transform physicians into facilitators of suicide,” the group said, adding that it would undermine transparency by requiring false reporting on death certificates.
If signed, New York would become the 13th state, along with Washington, D.C., to legalize assisted suicide. Earlier this month, Illinois joined that list after Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker signed similar legislation into law.
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