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In what has to be one of the most tone-deaf moves from a Democratic governor in recent memory, New York's Kathy Hochul announced on Wednesday that she's reached a deal to sign legislation legalizing assisted suicide for terminally ill patients with less than six months to live. And she tried to justify it by dragging the Founding Fathers into the mix, of course.
"Two and a half centuries ago, our founding fathers established a vision of a country based on limited government and broad individual rights that together protect rights of speech, worship, privacy and bodily autonomy," Hochul wrote. "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."
Look, I'm all for limited government and individual rights, but twisting the Founders' vision to green-light doctors handing out fatal drugs feels like a stretch that would make even the most flexible yoga instructor wince. The Democrat-controlled legislature passed this over the summer, but Hochul held out for some revisions she claims will "protect family members, caregivers and doctors" and "ensure" the bill isn't "misused or broadly applied."
She says lawmakers agreed to those changes, which will be added in January, and then she'll sign it.
"I have come to see this as a matter of individual choice that does not have to be about shortening life but rather about shortening dying. And I do not believe that in every instance condemning someone to excruciating pain and suffering preserves the dignity and sanctity of life," she wrote.
The backlash was swift and fierce, starting with the New York State Republican Party calling it a flat-out disaster.
“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,” said New York GOP Chair Ed Cox. “This is not compassion, it’s abandonment. True leadership defends life, dignity and hope, even when it’s hard.”
Cox didn't stop there, urging voters to back Republican challengers like Elise Stefanik, who he says “believes every life has value and who will fight relentlessly for families, the disabled and the voiceless.”
The Bishops of New York State weren't holding back either.
“We are extraordinarily troubled by Governor Hochul’s announcement that she will sign the egregious bill passed by the legislature earlier this year sanctioning physician-assisted suicide in New York State,” they said. “This new law 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.”
Then there's the New York Alliance Against Assisted Suicide, a coalition including disability rights groups, Democrats for Life, and others, who pointed out the obvious dangers.
“Even with changes, this legislation would still single out disabled and terminally ill New Yorkers for radically different treatment than other individuals experiencing suicidal ideation,” they said. “It would still transform physicians into facilitators of suicide. It would still undermine medical transparency by requiring false reporting on death certificates.”
If Hochul goes through with this, New York will join 12 other states plus D.C. in legalizing assisted suicide, hot on the heels of Illinois, where Democrat Gov. JB Pritzker just signed a similar bill.
At a time when suicide rates are climbing and mental health resources are stretched thin, pushing a law that tells the suffering their lives can be "expediently" ended isn't progressive—it's a profound moral surrender. Hochul's attempt to wrap it in the Founders' rhetoric only makes the hypocrisy sting more.
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