New York State Inches Closer To Allowing Doctors To Assist Patients Who Want To Commit Suicide

New York State’s physician-assisted dying bill is headed to the governor’s desk after it was passed by the state’s senate, the closest the bill has come to becoming law since lawmakers at Albany started considering the proposal a decade ago. On Monday, New York’s state senate voted 35-27 in favor of the Medical Aid in Dying Act, which would allow patients with an “incurable and irreversible illness or condition” and life expectancies of six months or less to request a lethal prescription from an attending physician. Patients who request the medication would have to present a declaration from two witnesses that they made the request voluntarily and were not coerced. The Empire State would become the 12th state to allow medically assisted dying if the bill is signed. Governor Hochul has not stated if she will sign it, but her office said she is reviewing it. Advocates of assisted dying have been urging the legislature to pass such a measure for a decade. Lawmakers debated a similar bill in 2018, but it failed to make it through the assembly’s committees. After years of little progress, assisted dying advocates got an abrupt win in April when the assembly passed the bill in an 81-67 vote. Two Democrats opposed the measure. A Democratic assembly member of Brooklyn, Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, said ahead of the vote, “My concern and opposition to this bill comes from the great risk of targeting vulnerable communities of color given the historical health disparities that they continue to face.”It appeared that there was a similar growing tide of support for the proposal in the senate as 25 senators sponsored it, and it needed 32 votes to pass. One of the sponsors of the bill in the senate, Brad Hoylman-Sigal, celebrated Monday’s vote in a post on X, writing, “For the first time ever, the New York State Senate, and now both houses of the State Legislature, have voted to give New Yorkers autonomy over the end of life care.”Republicans unanimously opposed the bill. They raised moral concerns and fretted that New Yorkers would feel the state does not offer other health care options and so would choose death. Other opponents expressed concerns that there is not enough oversight in the legislation. Ahead of the vote, a Republican state senator, Steven Chan, said, “I admire the compassion component of this bill, but there are just too many aspects that are bad about this.”“There’s no oversight, and I’m going to have to vote no on behalf of my district,” Mr. Chan said. The senate minority leader, Rob Ortt, posted on X that New York should “lead the nation — in real end-of-life care.” However, he said the state is “dead last in palliative care access” and “that’s what we should fix” instead of giving out “poison and call[ing] it compassion.”In a statement after the senate passed the bill, the executive director of the New York State Catholic Conference, Dennis Poust, said, “This is a dark day for New York State. For the first time in its history, New York is on the verge of authorizing doctors to help their patients commit suicide. Make no mistake — this is only the beginning, and the only person standing between New York and the assisted suicide nightmare unfolding in Canada is Kathy Hochul.”“We reject the false notion that suicide is ever a solution. Instead, we call on New York State to expand palliative and hospice care, mental health services, and family caregiver support,” Mr. Poust said. Opponents of the bill are also warning about what they say is a slippery slope with the legislation, pointing to Canada, which expanded who is eligible to request the lethal medication under its law to include patients with severe mental illness.Mr. Hoylman-Sigal addressed those concerns on Monday, telling lawmakers, “We are the guardians of the slippery slope.”“We would be the ones to expand this law, not the courts, and we should not,” he said. Ms. Hochul has until the end of the year to sign or veto the bill.

New York State Inches Closer To Allowing Doctors To Assist Patients Who Want To Commit Suicide

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