By Christine Persichette
New York has taken a controversial step that faith leaders describe as crossing a moral line: Governor Kathy Hochul has signed the Medical Aid in Dying Act into law, making assisted suicide legal in the Empire State.
The legislation, passed by both houses of the state legislature earlier in the spring, grants terminally ill individuals with less than six months to live the right to medical aid to end their lives.
Governor Hochul described the measure as a way to “speed up the inevitable.”
Hochul, a Catholic, acknowledged internal conflict over the decision. “There was a lot of religious conflict within me โ the way I was raised and the issues โ but I also have realized it’s not about me. It’s about 20 million New Yorkers,” she said.
Dennis Poust from the New York State Catholic Conference called the governor’s decision a grave miscalculation.
“We can do better for our vulnerable, elderly and sick than giving them pills to end their lives. We can make them comfortable… and that’s the bottom line it’s not up to us to end the lives of others or encourage people to end their own lives,” Poust stated.
Catholics across the state have vocally opposed the bill, including holding vigils in the cold outside the governor’s office in hopes of persuading the Catholic governor to veto it.
Hochul said she considered the widespread belief that euthanasia violates the sanctity of life and respects those views.
However, she maintained that the law is not about shortening life but rather shortening dying.
Poust shared a personal story: “My own father was diagnosed with six months to live and lived for two and a half years. Doctors make mistakes… God takes us when he’s ready and our jobs as loved ones is to walk with those as they’re dying.”
New York now becomes the 13th U.S. jurisdiction to legalize physician-assisted suicide, joining California, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Vermont, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, Delaware, and Washington, D.C.
The governor emphasized that the bill allows individual doctors and religiously affiliated health facilities to decline to offer medical aid in dying.
She is also proposing additional safeguards to protect those with disabilities and the elderly from pressure, including input from a medical doctor and a psychologist, as well as a five-day waiting period.
For many in the faith community, however, these protections fall short. Poust said, “We were very clear with the Governor’s council all along that there are no amendments that they could offer that would make this acceptable to us because we see it as a fundamental moral evil on par with abortion or the death penalty or other attacks on human life.”
The bishops of New York State expressed being “extraordinarily troubled” by the decision, stating that the new law signals “our government’s abandonment of its most vulnerable citizens.”
They urged Catholics and all New Yorkers not to give up the pro-life fight.
In a formal statement from the New York State Catholic Conference, leaders reiterated: “We must clearly reiterate that it is in direct conflict with Catholic teaching on the sacredness and dignity of all human life from conception until natural death and is a grave moral evil on par with other direct attacks on human life. We call on Catholics and all New Yorkers to reject physician-assisted suicide for themselves, their loved ones, and those in their care. And we pray that our state turn away from its promotion of a culture of death and invest instead in life-affirming, compassionate hospice and palliative care, which is seriously underutilized.”