New York‘s Medical Aid in Dying Act is under consideration in the state’s Senate Health Committee after passing in the state Assembly in late April. It has 25 co-sponsors in the Senate, and 32 votes are needed to pass it. Democratic leaders have expressed confidence that it will do so, and even some Republican senators are open to voting for it. Gov. Kathy Hochul’s (D-NY) position is ambiguous, but MAID advocates expect her support once the bill clears the Senate.
New York voters also overwhelmingly support it. A recent YouGov survey found that 72% back the measure, including 65% of Catholics.
But the bill is a fast-rolling nightmare for the disabled, elderly, and the culture as a whole. Much support for physician-assisted suicide is well-intended. But crossing the bright red line from preserving life to intentionally hastening death has created moral catastrophes in countries that have made the move. New York should heed these examples.
In 2016, Canada passed an assisted dying law for adults with a “grievous and irremediable medical condition” causing intolerable suffering. However, this definition expanded in 2021 when the Superior Court of Quebec removed the requirement that death be “reasonably foreseeable” and ruled that the “end of life” criterion violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, making it unconstitutional and invalid. Plans to extend assisted death to people with mental illness as a sole condition by 2023 were postponed to 2027 due to a lack of safeguards. A 2023 Health Canada report highlighted cases where patients sought death due to loneliness or a lack of disability support. Assisted dying accounted for 4.7% of all deaths in Canada in 2023.
A similar trajectory played out in the Netherlands. A 2002 law legalized assisted death for terminally ill patients with unbearable suffering, requiring strict medical oversight. But eligibility expanded steadily over the years, growing to include conditions such as dementia and mental disorders. In 2024, a 29-year-old Dutch woman was euthanized for “treatment-resistant psychiatric suffering” in the form of chronic depression, anxiety, autism, and an unspecified personality disorder. Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide together accounted for 5.8% of the country’s total deaths in 2024.
Belgium has also incrementally expanded the right to assisted suicide. It legalized euthanasia for patients with “constant and unbearable physical or psychiatric suffering” from incurable conditions in 2002. By 2021, 91 people were euthanized for psychiatric disorders such as depression and borderline personality disorder. In a 2022 case, a woman was killed because of trauma-related suffering after being denied affordable psychiatric care.
The New York MAID bill defines a terminal illness as one likely to cause death within six months. However, as Canada, the Netherlands, and Belgium show, restrictions tend to loosen over time. It is a cardinal case of a slippery slope, and our understanding of life and death is sliding down it.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN ASSISTED SUICIDE BECOMES THE NORM?
Normalizing state-assisted suicide can turn into coercion of the elderly, disabled, and chronically ill to end their lives to save others the bother of looking after them. Pressing the vulnerable to seek death rather than caring for them and healing them is flatly uncivilized. Legalizing assisted death normalizes the idea that some lives are less valuable than others, which contradicts a central underpinning of our culture and law. Offering death to people with mental health problems is particularly worrisome, for it makes a fatal suggestion to people often not fit to judge the matter and give proper informed consent.
Though framed as compassionate and kind, assisted death is dangerous and leads quickly to dark societal consequences. Suffering from a serious illness can be terrible, and every effort should be made to care for the sick, elderly, and disabled. But normalizing assisted suicide is a cultural red line that should not be crossed.