Legislation S.138/A.136 Gives New Yorkers the Choice to Suffer Less – to Shorten Not Their Lives, but Their Deaths
Governor Hochul Secured Key Additional Guardrails Ensuring Integrity of Patient Decision and Preparedness of Medical Institutions
Governor Hochul today signed legislation S.138/A.136 that will allow medical aid in dying to be available to terminally ill New Yorkers with less than six months to live. This historic bill signing comes after careful reflection and deliberation with the sponsors of the bill, advocacy organizations, and everyday New Yorkers brave enough to share their personal experiences in order to get this legislation across the finish line.
“Our state will always stand firm in safeguarding New Yorkers’ freedoms and right to bodily autonomy, which includes the right for the terminally ill to peacefully and comfortably end their lives with dignity and compassion,” Governor Hochul said. “This journey was deeply personal for me. Witnessing my mother’s suffering from ALS was an excruciating experience, knowing there was nothing I could do to alleviate the pain of someone I loved. It took years of intimate discussions with our bill sponsors, health experts, advocates, and most importantly, families who have similar firsthand experiences. New Yorkers deserve the choice to endure less suffering, not by shortening their lives, but by shortening their deaths — I firmly believe we made the right decision.”
The bill, as passed by the Legislature originally included a number of protections in order to ensure that no patient was coerced into choosing medical aid in dying and that no health care professional or religiously affiliated health facility would be forced to offer medical aid in dying. The Governor worked with the Legislature to include additional guardrails that will make sure people won’t be taken advantage of, while still ensuring terminally ill New Yorkers have the choice to die comfortably and on their own terms, including:
- A mandatory waiting period of 5 days between when a prescription is written and filled.
- An oral request by the patient for medical aid in dying must be recorded by video or audio.
- A mandatory mental health evaluation of the patient seeking medical aid in dying by a psychologist or psychiatrist.
- A prohibition against anyone who may benefit financially from the death of a patient from being eligible to serve as a witness to the oral request or an interpreter for the patient.
- Limiting the availability of medical aid in dying to New York residents.
- Requiring that the initial evaluation of a patient by a physician be in person.
- Allowing religiously-oriented home hospice providers to opt out of offering medical aid in dying.
- Ensuring that a violation of the law is defined as professional misconduct under the Education Law.
- Extending the effective date of the bill to six months after signing to allow the Department of Health to put into place regulations required to implement the law while also ensuring that health care facilities can properly prepare and train staff for compliance.
In December, the Governor joined the bill’s sponsors, supportive advocates and New Yorkers with lived experience at a press conference announcing the agreement reached with the Legislature to make medical aid in dying available to terminally ill New Yorkers with less than six months to live. The Times Union also published an op-ed to outline her support for medical aid in dying.
Local Assemblyman Joe Sempolinski called medically assisted death a “abonimation”
