Assisted suicide is not a compassionate policy.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Dr Lydia Dugdale

Dr. L.S. Dugdale who is a physician and an ethicist at Columbia University and the author of the book: “The Lost Art of Dying: Reviving Forgotten Wisdom.” wrote an excellent commentary that was published in the New York Times on May 11, 2025.

Dugdale begins her article by providing insight into some of the problems with modern medicine. She then writes:

Given my views, you might expect that I would celebrate the Medical Aid in Dying Act recently passed by the New York State Assembly and now awaiting action in the New York State Senate. But this bill, like similar legislation that facilitates dying in places such as Oregon and Canada, is not about dying well. It is about relieving society — government, medical systems, even families — of the responsibility to care for those who need the most help: the mentally ill, the poor, the physically disabled.

Dugdale points out that the New York bill defines assisted suicide as "aid in dying" and as a medical practice.

The New York bill defines “aid in dying” as a medical practice. If a patient qualifies, a doctor can prescribe a lethal dose of drugs that the patient may self-administer to end his or her life. Labelling this a medical practice confers a kind of legitimacy on what is also called, more accurately, physician-assisted suicide.

Dugdale explains that the New York bill does not require a mental health assessment to protect depressed people from assisted suicide. In Oregon, where assisted suicide is legal, only 3 out of 607 people who received a prescription for lethal assisted suicide poison, received a mental health assessment.

Dugdale explains that the New York assisted suicide bill does not allow assisted suicide for people based on disability alone and then states:

In this light, to claim that people with disabilities are protected by the New York bill is disingenuous. The bill may prevent them from qualifying for assisted suicide solely because of their disabilities, but disability can become a terminal condition by choice — or despair.

Dugdale then looks to the Canadian experience with euthanasia:

Here, the experience of Canada, which since 2016 has allowed eligible adults to request medical assistance in dying, is worrisome. In 2023, 432 Canadians who received assisted suicide said they required but did not receive disability support services. More disturbing still, nearly half of the non-terminal patients who received assisted suicide did so at least in part because of loneliness. One man sought assisted death as a result of homelessness, then changed his mind after a GoFundMe campaign helped him find shelter. What began as a right to die when death is “reasonably foreseeable” seems to have evolved into the possibility of a hastened death for almost any form of suffering.

Dugdale concludes by reinforcing that assisted suicide is not a compassionate policy:

This is not a compassionate policy — not in Canada, not in Oregon and not, should the bill become law, in New York. Instead of investing in the infrastructure of support for the lonely, the depressed, the disabled and the poor, we offer them a prescription for death. We call it autonomy, but it’s abandonment.

More articles on this topic:

• New York Post editorial board opposes assisted suicide. (Link).
• Action is needed: New York state Assembly passes assisted suicide bill (Link).