Hochul Signs Assisted Suicide Bill Into Law Despite Religious Opposition and Patient Safety Concerns

Gov. Kathy Hochul signed New York’s Medical Aid in Dying Act into law on Friday, finalizing a greatly contested measure that will allow terminally ill adults to obtain deadly medication despite fierce opposition from religious communities, disability advocates, and medical ethicists who warn the legislation contains dangerous loopholes and will lead to insurance companies refusing to fund life-saving care.

The governor signed the bill on the final day of her 30-day review period, making New York the 13th state to legalize physician-assisted suicide. The law will take effect in August.

The signing represents the culmination of efforts that began just days earlier, when the state legislature rushed through chapter amendments to address some of Governor Hochul’s concerns. The Assembly voted 83-62 in favor of the amendments on Wednesday, while the Senate approved them 34-28 – margins virtually identical to the original bill’s passage in June.

Critics argue the fundamental dangers of the legislation remain largely intact, with several provisions they describe as particularly troubling surviving the revision process.

Among the most contentious is a requirement forcing physicians to transfer patient medical records to doctors willing to perform assisted suicide, even when doing so violates their religious beliefs, and would, at a minimum, likely constitute a violation of the halacha of mesaya lidei ovrei aveirah, assisting one in violating the Torah..

Rabbi Dr. Aharon Glatt, a prominent physician in the Jewish community, expressed deep concerns about the bill’s practical implications in an interview earlier this week.

“I’m very concerned that people who might otherwise have had a chance to live will unfortunately select to die,” Rabbi Glatt said. He emphasized the critical distinction in Jewish law between passive and active interventions at the end of life. “To do something actively that is extinguishing life – that is not permitted.”

While Hochul’s amendments did add new restrictions – including mandating psychiatric evaluations and prohibiting witnesses from having financial interests in the patient’s death – opponents maintain these changes are woefully inadequate.

The amended legislation still contains numerous gaps that critics say could lead to abuse: witnesses’ signatures are not verified for fraud, no video recording requirement was included despite earlier indications, no oversight process exists for pharmacists dispensing lethal medications, and there are no provisions to remove lethal medication from patients who develop dementia after receiving it.

Another aspect to the bill that legal experts find troubling is a severability clause that would allow courts to strike down individual safeguards while keeping the core assisted suicide provisions intact.

“Most of the loopholes from the original bill were never corrected,” one askan said, warning that any protections in the bill are “worthless in the long term.”

In a letter signed by prominent rabbis including the Kasho Rav and Rav Hillel Neuberger of Mount Kisco, Jewish leaders cited Torah prohibitions against suicide and invoked a chilling historical parallel.

“The Nazi Mercy-Killing Aktion T4 program directly led to the gassing of millions of Jews,” the letter warns. “Aktion T4 led directly to Operation Reinhard, which was the Nazi extermination camp operation encompassing Treblinka, Bełżec, and Sobibór.”

The rabbis noted that approximately 92 of 450 identified perpetrators within Operation Reinhard camps had previously been involved in the Aktion T4 euthanasia program. “Aktion T4 was also sold by ‘compassion,’ ‘consent,’ and ‘safeguards,'” they wrote.

National Right to Life also strongly condemned Hochul’s signing, with president Carol Tobias stating: “New York has chosen to redefine suicide as a medical treatment, sending a chilling message to people who are sick, disabled, or struggling that their lives are less worth protecting.”

Republican Party Chairman Ed Cox called Hochul’s decision “a profound moral failure.”

Hochul, a self-described practicing Catholic whose mother died from ALS, has described the decision as one of the most difficult of her tenure. In December, she wrote that she had come to see the issue “as a matter of individual choice that does not have to be about shortening life but rather about shortening dying.”

At the time, Hochul stated she had to be “very careful” not to allow her “own circumstances and life influences … to color my decision making when I’m making a decision not for myself but for 20 million New Yorkers.”

Under the new law, mentally competent, terminally ill adults with six months or less to live can request life-ending medication. The request must be in writing, signed by two witnesses, and approved by both an attending physician and a consulting physician. The amendments added requirements for psychiatric evaluation in certain cases.

Rabbi Glatt urged community members facing end-of-life decisions to exercise extreme caution and seek proper rabbinic guidance before making any irreversible medical decisions.

“It may be that sometimes people might be offered by well-meaning and good-intentioned physicians things that are contrary to Jewish law,” he said. “People should make sure that they discuss these things with their rabbi before they arrive at any decisions that, unfortunately, are irreversible.”

The bill’s sponsor in the Assembly is Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, with Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, head of the Codes Committee, also supporting the legislation.