Thirteen reasons to reject suicide bill

Shown taking a stand against the state’s assisted suicide bill at the State Capital in January 2025 are Jessica Rodgers (from l.), coalitions director for the Patients Rights Action Fund, an organization fighting to end assisted suicide laws, Kristen Curran, director of government relations at the New York State Catholic Conference, Dennis Poust, executive director at the New York State Catholic Conference and Dr. Eve Slater, a former assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and currently a professor of medicine at Columbia University's Vagelos College of Physicians. Slater heads up a group called the New York Biomedical Roundtable, which is made up of physicians at Columbia and other NYC-area hospitals who oppose assisted suicide. (Photo courtesy of the New York State Catholic Conference)

1  The American Medical Association strongly opposes it: “Physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks.”

2  This legislation promotes and normalizes suicide at the very same time the state spends millions of dollars to prevent suicides. No matter how hard the advocates try to avoid the word, this is by any definition a program to promote suicide, which virtually every public health authority calls a major public health problem.

3  The CDC says suicide was the second leading cause of death among adolescents (ages 12-17) across the U.S. in 2020, and 22 percent of high school students seriously considered attempting suicide in 2021.

4  Advocates say their bill is only for “mentally competent” people. But the law they want doesn’t require a mental health evaluation, even though public health experts treat suicide as a mental health crisis. Doctors would NOT be required to find out if the patient has ever contemplated or attempted suicide before, or if they’ve ever been treated for depression, paranoia, dementia, anxiety or any mental health condition.

5  In Oregon, which New York advocates point to as the model, patients are rarely — if ever — referred for psychiatric exams. Of the 1,167 suicide prescriptions written in 2023 and 2024, only six were referred. That’s 0.5 percent, or one half of 1 percent. (Source: Oregon Health Department.)

6  Doctors prescribing the suicide drugs don’t need to see a patient in person. Visits could be via Zoom.

7  The suicide doctor doesn’t even have to be your regular physician and probably isn’t. In Oregon last year, half of the suicide prescriptions were written by doctors who had been working with the patient for five weeks or less.

8  The national group “Death with Dignity” advises patients to “ask any doctor … even your dermatologist” to write a suicide prescription. Last year in Oregon, one doctor alone wrote 84 prescriptions — 14 percent of the total.

9  Across the country and in Canada, advocates have pushed for expansion of initial laws, chipping away at supposed “safeguards.” Six of the 10 states where doctor-assisted suicide is legal have subsequently broadened it. States have opened the law up to nonresidents, permitted non-doctors to write prescriptions and, in California, legislation was introduced to expand it to include dementia patients.

10  While the N.Y. bill says this will only be for “terminally ill” patients, Canada said the same thing until their law was expanded to include people with “chronic” but not terminal illnesses (e.g., arthritis). In 2027, the Canada law is set to expand to include people suffering from dementia, depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses.

11  In 2022 alone, 2,264 Canadians used “aid in dying” to end their lives because of loneliness, and another 323 did so when they were unable to access palliative care, while 196 did it after they could not obtain disability support.

12  Advocates say the state can evaluate the program but that’s impossible, as the legislation requires doctors to falsify death certificates by requiring a person’s underlying illness to be listed as the cause of death and not the lethal dose of chemicals the doctor prescribed. Under any other circumstances, this would be a crime under the state’s Penal Law. Because death certificates are falsified, no one could ever know how many people took their own lives under this program or even if the rules were followed.

13  If you asked New Yorkers to list the top 20 issues that they want lawmakers to address, this would not make the list. Outside of a small, well-funded, and very loud niche group, New Yorkers are not calling for this.

— New York State Catholic Conference