Lawmakers in New York’s state senate are considering an assisted dying bill after it passed the assembly, a milestone since it previously failed to make it out of committee.  

The assembly passed the Medical Aid in Dying Act earlier this month by an 81-67 vote. Twenty-one Democrats voted against the bill. 

The legislation now heads to the state senate, where advocates note there has been growing support for the measure in recent years. The senate majority leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, told Politico that “certainly more people have signed on in the senate than had been over the past few years.”

There are 25 senators who support the bill, and it needs 32 votes to pass.

The bill would allow terminally ill adults who are believed to have six months or less to live and are deemed to be mentally competent to ask for life-ending medication. However, it would allow doctors to opt out of prescribing the drug. 

The legislature debated a similar bill in 2018, but it failed to make it through the assembly’s committees. Advocates for assisted death are feeling optimistic about the chance of the bill becoming law now that it’s made it through the assembly. 

In a statement, one of the lead campaigners for the bill, Corinne Carey of Compassion & Choices, thanked the assembly speaker, Carl Heastie, for his “strong leadership in getting us to today” and said, “All eyes and our amazing advocates turn our attention to the senate.”

“We are working with and counting on Senator Hoylman-Sigel to be able to guide this bill to the floor — with the leadership of Leader Stewart-Cousins — and provide final passage of the Medical Aid in Dying Act before sending it to the governor’s desk,” she said. 

A sponsor of the bill in the assembly, Amy Paulin, called the measure “compassionate, commonsense legislation” that will reduce “needless suffering.”

The bill has received opposition from conservatives and the faith community.

In a statement, the New York State Catholic Conference said, “At a time when New Yorkers are rightly concerned with issues such as affordability, crime, homelessness, federal cuts to Medicaid, behavioral health access, and their children’s education, it is unconscionable that lawmakers would consider now an appropriate time to legalize suicide for a segment of the population.”

“Sadly, we are facing a suicide crisis among young people in our state, and the government rightly spends large sums of money to prevent these tragedies and to deliver a consistent message that life is worth living,” the statement said. “Now our state will be telling its citizens that some lives — perhaps where there has been a loss of autonomy or a disability — are not worth living.”

The conference also pointed to Canada’s assisted dying law, which was passed in 2016 and has been expanded so that people with chronic pain or mental illnesses can request assisted death, and warned a similar expansion might happen in New York. 

Congresswoman Elise Stefanik also released a statement that said the assisted dying bill “undermines the fundamental principle that all life is sacred” and offers an “immoral shortcut that devalues human life.”

A Democratic assembly member who opposed the bill, Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, told reporters her “concern and opposition of this bill comes from the great risk of targeting vulnerable communities of color given the historical health disparities that they continue to face.”

If the senate passes the bill, it is not clear whether Governor Hochul would sign it. She told Spectrum 1 earlier this month, “I never talk about what I’m going to do until I do it.”

If New York passes the bill, it would become the 11th state to allow the practice.