Message
The right to make decisions about your own body and health care is at the core of our personal liberty and autonomy.
Just as people have the right to refuse medical treatment – even when it might extend their life – they should have the right to seek medical aid when they are dying and medicine cannot prolong their life. Our state should allow them to die on their own terms, with dignity.
Giving people choices when they approach the end of their life is the compassionate thing to do. Many people with terminal illnesses endure intense pain and onerous treatments that can’t reverse the progression of their condition. Giving those people access to medical aid in dying allows them to end suffering when and how they wish.
I’m writing to ask you to sign the New York Medical Aid in Dying Act – A.136 (Paulin)/ S.138 (Hoylman-Sigal). This legislation would allow mentally capable adults who’ve been diagnosed with a terminal illness to make the highly personal decision to bring about a peaceful end to their life with the assistance of medication prescribed by a doctor.
This legislation would allow those individuals to exercise personal autonomy over how their lives end when the end is inevitable. Even if they choose not to request or take life-ending medication, just knowing that they have the option of exercising control over the end of their lives can bring immense comfort in their final days.
This legislation takes a carefully crafted, measured approach based on the practices of other states that permit aid in dying. Its structure is intended to ensure a person’s decision to accelerate death is fully informed and guarded against abuse.
The bill requires, as a core safeguard, a terminal diagnosis determined by an attending physician and medically confirmed by a consulting physician. The bill also requires that the attending physician discuss with the patient the possibility of not ingesting the medication and of other end-of-life alternatives, including palliative and hospice care. Further, a prescription for life-ending medication cannot be written without the attending physician offering the patient the opportunity to rescind the request.
The Medical Aid in Dying Act addresses the risk of coercion through multiple safeguards to ensure that a person’s request for aid in dying is voluntary. If a physician believes the individual may lack capacity to make this choice, they must refer the patient for a mental health evaluation.
Finally, the bill plainly says that no person can qualify for aid in dying solely because of age or disability.
Fully 68 percent of New Yorkers support medical aid in dying, including majorities of both Democrats and Republicans.
Now I’m counting on you to sign this compassionate legislation into law that honors and respects the wishes of our fellow New Yorkers during the toughest time of their lives.
