New York Moves Toward Legalizing Doctor-Assisted Suicide
New York state is on track to legalize physician assisted suicide for adults in early 2026, joining 12 other states and Washington D.C. that allow such intervention.
The Medical Aid in Dying Act passed the New York Senate in June, but stalled in the state House until Gov. Kathy Hochul announced on Dec. 17 an agreement she reached to pass an amended version of the bill.
If the legislation passes the Assembly as expected, Hochul has pledged to sign the bill, likely in January, with an effective date six months later.
Illinois is the most recent state to approve physician assisted suicide. Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the bill Dec. 12, with an effective date of September 2026. The delay is intended to allow participating health care providers and the Illinois Department of Public Health to implement certain processes and protections for patients that the law stipulates.
Gary Hollingsworth, interim president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, lamented the legislation as sinful and wrongheaded.
“These proposals are often called ‘death with dignity,’ but fail to promote options that are truly dignifying, like robust palliative care and hospice services,” Hollingsworth told Baptist Press. “Experiencing pain and suffering on this side of Heaven is undeniably challenging and heart wrenching.
“As followers of Christ, we know that our life and death are not in our hands. Instead of hastening death, suffering should lead us to prayer and cause us to consider how to bear with one another in the midst of it.”
New York’s bill would allow physicians to prescribe life-ending medications for certain patients diagnosed with less than six months to live, and follows more than a decade of debate in New York on the polarizing subject.
Religion-based opt-outs for home hospice providers, a five-day waiting period before filling a prescription, mandatory mental health evaluations for patients and a patient’s video and audio recordings of requests for assisted suicide are among several measures in the New York legislation described as patient protections.
Illinois also includes certain protections in its legislation, requiring patients to make several oral and written requests for aid in dying, criminalizing forced or coerced requests, and allowing doctors and health care providers to refuse to participate in such procedures, among other restrictions.
But patients diagnosed with a terminal illness would do better to seek divine help, Hollingsworth said.
“The presence of suffering is no cause to take the life of self or another,” Hollingsworth said. “It is cause for reliance on the Holy Spirit and for remembering the faithfulness of God and the enduring hope of the cross, which comforts us with the reality that Christ has wholly defeated death and, for all those in Him, taken away its sting.”
Messengers to the annual Southern Baptist Convention have denounced assisted suicide in at least three resolutions, including the 1996 Resolution on Assisted Suicide.
“We vigorously denounce assisted suicide as an appropriate means of treating suffering,” the resolution states, and “call upon federal, state and local governments to prosecute under the law physicians or others who practice assisted suicide.”
Illinois dubbed its legislation Deb’s law after Deb Robinson, a former Illinois social worker who became a strong advocate for the legislation after being diagnosed with an aggressive form of neuroendocrine carcinoma, according to Death With Dignity, an assisted suicide advocacy group.
Assisted suicide remains illegal in 37 states, but many of those are considering legislation, Death With Dignity reported, including Indiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled there is no constitutional protection for assisted suicide, leaving the matter to states.
Oregon was the first state to approve physician-assisted suicide in 1997. In addition to Washington D.C. and Illinois, the practice is legal for adults in California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Vermont and Washington state.
This article has been republished courtesy of Baptist Press.
Diana Chandler is Baptist Press’ senior writer.