N.Y. Governor Will Sign Right-to-Die Bill for the Terminally Ill

Gov. Kathy Hochul cast the measure in unusually personal terms, saying she had felt “the pain of seeing someone you love suffer and feeling powerless to stop it.”

Gov. Kathy Hochul announced on Wednesday that she would sign a bill that will allow terminally ill New Yorkers to end their lives, speaking in unusually personal terms as she settled an emotional, decade-long battle between religious leaders and right-to-die advocates.

The law will apply to adults who have incurable, irreversible illnesses and six months or less to live. Each patient will need the sign-off of three doctors.

Twelve states, the District of Columbia and several countries in Europe have passed similar laws over the objections of some disability-rights advocates and religious organizations, most notably the Catholic Church, which characterizes the bill as legalizing assisted suicide.

Ms. Hochul, who is Catholic, said it was one of the most difficult decisions she had faced as governor. She wrote in an essay published Wednesday morning in the Albany Times Union that she had listened to people suffering through the agony of a slow death, and that their painful experiences mirrored her own observations of a beloved family member.

“I watched my own mom die from A.L.S.,” she wrote, referring to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. “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.”

The governor, a Democrat, said that she had struggled with the Catholic teaching on the measure. “There’s a lot of religious conflict in me, the way I was raised,” she said on Wednesday. “But I realized it’s not about me, it’s about 20 million New Yorkers.”

She also found faith-related reasons to support the bill. “I do not believe that in every instance condemning someone to excruciating pain and suffering preserves the dignity and sanctity of life,” she wrote in the essay.

She added, “I was taught that God is merciful and compassionate, and so must we be.”

In a statement on Wednesday, the New York State Catholic Conference called the state bill, the Medical Aid in Dying Act, “egregious” and said it signaled the state’s “abandonment of its most vulnerable citizens.” The church opposes assisted suicide and euthanasia, which the Vatican has called “intrinsically evil.”

Even so, the idea is slowly gaining ground across the country. Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat, signed a similar bill last week to legalize the procedure there.

Ms. Hochul, who held news conference about the legislation on Wednesday afternoon, said she intends to sign the bill after the State Legislature returns for session in January and formally adopts a raft of changes she made to the original bill passed earlier this year.

Ms. Hochul said her amendments were intended to address concerns that vulnerable New Yorkers could be pressured into life-ending decisions they would not have made on their own.

Each patient must provide written and oral requests to confirm that the life-ending decision was made of their own free will. The initial legislation required two physicians to testify to the seriousness of the patient’s illness; Ms. Hochul insisted a third certification be obtained from a psychiatrist or psychologist to ensure that the patient was not under duress, a requirement that the bill’s supporters say may pose a worrisome obstacle.

The bill provides for a five-day waiting period, to offer applicants time to change their minds. The measure will take effect six months after it is signed, though a small number of waivers will be made available for those who need to make use of the law sooner. Mental illnesses do not qualify. Any hospital that does not want to participate for religious reasons will not be required to, Ms. Hochul said.

The original version of the bill would have allowed terminally ill patients from other states to come to New York to end their lives. Ms. Hochul’s version will apply only to New York residents, who have broadly supported the option in recent polls.

The measure has been heralded by a variety of medical and professional associations, including the New York State Psychiatric Association, the Medical Society of the State of New York and the New York Civil Liberties Union, which called medical aid in dying an “established and trusted medical practice” much like hospice and palliative care.

“It’s not about shortening life,” Brad Hoylman-Sigal, a Democrat who sponsored the bill in the State Senate, said on Wednesday. “It’s about shortening death.”

The news was also celebrated by terminally ill people, like Dr. Jeremy Boal. A Columbia County physician who turned to activism after learning of his own terminal illness, Dr. Boal thanked the governor and the Legislature in a statement, saying Ms. Hochul’s announcement had lifted a cloud of fear lurking since his diagnosis.

Whether or not he decided to make use of the law, he said, “it has given me the peace of mind to live my best life for whatever time I have left.”

The added safeguards come as other countries have expanded access to the process, raising questions about the government’s role in balancing the sanctity of life with individual freedom. In Canada, expansions of the law have allowed people with mental illness to end their lives, sparking debate about mental competency and autonomy.

Some disability-rights activists have also raised alarms about the measure, which they say could pose an inherent threat to disabled people. Others worry the legislation will be broadened in the future, as it has been in other jurisdictions.

State Republican leaders castigated the governor’s decision as a “profound moral failure” and sought to use it to bolster the bid by Elise Stefanik, a North Country congresswoman, to become governor next year.

“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,” Ed Cox, the chairman of the state Republican Party, said of Ms. Hochul. “This is not compassion; it’s abandonment.”

Arguments like these have blocked the bill from advancing since it was first introduced a decade ago by Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, a Democrat, after the long and painful death of her sister. Over the years, proponents of the measure, many of whom are now in their 80s, have long been a familiar sight around the State Capitol. One group said it had brought hundreds of supporters to Albany to lobby for the bill over the years, many of whom were terminally ill. Dozens died during the campaign.

In a recent Siena University poll, 54 percent of New Yorkers supported the legislation, and 28 percent opposed it (the rest were unsure or undecided). That included a plurality of Republicans, 48 percent of whom said they approved of such a measure, compared with 39 percent who opposed it.

Ms. Hochul put the issue into the context of other struggles for personal freedoms, including abortion rights and L.G.B.T.Q. equality, both of which she supports. She said the decision had made her examine her own beliefs about the role of the state in daily life.

Making decisions about one’s bodily autonomy “is what dignity is all about,” Ms. Hochul said at the news conference.

If a suffering New Yorker made the difficult choice to die, she asked, “Who am I to stand in their way?”

Related Content