New York has moved to allow medically assisted death, and this piece argues the policy risks expanding beyond terminal cases and has chilling parallels to what happened in Canada.
Some days it feels like shouting into a canyon, warning people about a policy and hearing only an echo in return. New York will become the 13th state to permit medically assisted suicide, joining Illinois and others that call this approach compassionate while critics see a danger ahead.
That debate struck home for me this week after I returned from a trip and had to say goodbye to Bubba, the Catahoula Leopard my family adopted in 2012. For 13 years Bubba was constant through divorce, nursing school, and family grief; when he could no longer walk after a sudden decline, ending his suffering was the only humane choice for our dog.
People and animals are not the same, and many believe people carry an inherent dignity that should prevent the state from offering death as a policy option. The worry is not about compassion for the terminally ill; it is about how a program that starts narrow inevitably broadens until it becomes normalized as a cost-cutting and convenience-driven mechanism.
Gov. Kathy Hochul says she will sign the Medical Aid in Dying Act, making New York the 13th state to allow physician-assisted death.
The Democratic governor wrote Wednesday in the Albany Times Union that she’s approving the legislation after state lawmakers agreed to enact additional safeguards. They include residency restrictions, a five-day waiting period, and a requirement that patients record their oral request to end their lives.
Hochul wrote she watched her mother die slowly of ALS, a debilitating nerve disease. The governor said she weighed the state’s tradition of fostering individual rights against her own religious beliefs.
“I was taught that God is merciful and compassionate, and so must we,” Hochul wrote. “This includes permitting a merciful option to those facing the unimaginable and searching for comfort in their final months in this life.”
That sentiment is heartfelt and understandable, but policy must be driven by evidence and prudence, not emotion. Look at Canada: what began as tightly limited medical aid in dying has morphed into a program that now accounts for a rising share of deaths and includes people whose deaths are not reasonably foreseeable.
Canada expanded its MAiD program in 2021 to include those for whom “death is not reasonably foreseeable,” and the result has been a rapid climb in euthanasia cases. Estimates vary, but tens of thousands have died under MAiD since its introduction, with euthanasia now making up a meaningful share of national deaths.
Closer to home, states that legalized assisted death show growth in usage too, though not yet at Canadian levels. Illinois’ law uses language like “terminally ill adults,” and that wording feels tidy until you consider how definitions creep and how eligibility stretches under pressure from cost, resource shortages, or cultural shifts.
There are real stories that expose the danger. Jolene Van Alstine suffered from hyperparathyroidism, a treatable condition, yet lack of access and long waits pushed her toward options like assisted death in other countries. When healthcare access falters, the choice between treatment and death becomes distorted by system failures.
Single-payer advocates promise universal care, but centralized systems can also ration services, incentivize cheaper outcomes, and create perverse incentives. Ending care through policy is always cheaper than providing long-term treatment or expensive interventions, and that can quietly steer decisions away from life-preserving options.
Some Democrats flirted with withholding care during the COVID vaccine debates, and that political choreography raises hard questions about trust. If we accept policies that let bureaucracies decide who receives expensive care, the next step could be normalizing state-sanctioned death for groups deemed costly or inconvenient.
I do not want terminally ill people to suffer. I watched a family member die from ALS and helped provide hospice care at home for years; managing pain, dignity, and presence are how we honor people in their final months. That kind of care should be expanded and protected, not replaced by a public policy that makes death a default option.
There is a moral difference between euthanizing an animal out of mercy and a government offering death as policy for people. If putting a family pet down would make you a monster in the eyes of neighbors, why is it suddenly called compassion when done by law for a human being? The state must not play God or turn mercy into policy that erodes protections for the vulnerable.
