The Lies in New York’s Assisted Suicide Bill

This article was published by National Review on May 13, 2025.

By Wesley J Smith

New York is close to passing a bill to legalize assisted suicide. Having passed the assembly, it is currently being considered in the senate.

I read the bill, and much of it consists of the usual obfuscating definitions and pretenses seen in all such proposals. But a few of the provisions struck me as particularly mendacious. First, it defines prescribing poison as a “medical practice.” From S. 138:

“Medical aid in dying” means the medical practice of a physician prescribing medication to a qualified individual that the individual may choose to self-administer to bring about death.

Facilitating suicide is not, and never has been, “medical.” I could prescribe sufficient barbiturates to cause death by overdose. You could too. The only difference is the MD has the right to use the pad and lay people don’t.  Indeed, as the Estonian supreme court recently noted while (lamentably) creating a civil right to suicide for any reason, assisted suicide “intentionally causes harm” to the person who dies and “causing death cannot be considered the provision of a healthcare service.”

The bill also engages in blatant language reengineering:

§ 2899-n. Relation to other laws and contracts. 1. (a) A patient who requests medication under this article shall not, because of that request, be considered to be a person who is suicidal, and self-administering medication under this article shall not be deemed to be suicide, for any purpose.

But that is precisely what it is! Death by “medical aid in dying” isn’t natural. It is self killing, intentionally ending one’s own life, i.e. suicide.

And this means that some suicidal people will not be offered suicide prevention — which all suicidal people deserve regardless of the reason for wanting to end it all — even if the actual suicidal ideation is caused by something other than the underlying illness.

More:

Action taken in accordance with this article shall not be construed for any purpose to constitute suicide, assisted suicide, attempted suicide, promoting a suicide attempt, euthanasia, mercy killing, or homicide under the law, including as an accomplice or accessory or otherwise.

The law can redefine a dung beetle into a butterfly, but it still can’t fly and doesn’t consume nectar!

Of course, the legislation requires falsifying vital statistics:

§ 2899-p. Death certificate. 1. If otherwise authorized by law, theattending physician may sign the qualified individual’s death certificate.

Thee cause of death listed on a qualified individual’s death certificate who dies after self-administering medication under this article will be the underlying terminal illness or condition.

But disease will not be the actual cause of death. And remember, sometimes people diagnosed with a terminal illness never die from that condition.

Falsifying death certificates serves two purposes. First, it prevents transparency. Investigators will be unable to access the information they need to conduct independent studies. And second, pretending that some suicides are natural deaths distorts suicide statistics by making it appear as if fewer people killed themselves than actually did.

Dr Lydia Dugdale

I’ll close by recommending an excellent critique of the bill by the physician author of The Lost Art of Dying, published by the New York Times (of all places). From, “There Are Ways to Die With Dignity, but Not Like This,” by L. S. Dugdale:

When it comes to conventional suicide, it’s no secret that people who suffer from depression are at greater risk. There is no reason to think that depression is any less of a factor when it comes to physician-assisted suicide. Yet the New York bill, which is modeled on the Death With Dignity law enacted in Oregon in 1997, does not even require a mental health professional to screen patients for depression unless one of the doctors involved determines that the patient’s judgment may be impaired by a psychiatric or psychological disorder.

This is a major oversight that fails to protect depressed people from making flawed decisions. Depression is not just a mood; it distorts perception, often convincing people that their lives are worthless, their loved ones are better off without them and death is their only option.

Indeed. And I know of several cases of terminally ill people backing away from the ledge when they received proper social interventions and were very glad to still be alive.

Here is Dr. Dugdale’s powerful conclusion:

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.

The art of dying well cannot be severed from the art of living well, and that includes caring for one another, especially when it is hard, inconvenient or costly. It is not enough to offer the dying control. We must offer them dignity — not by affirming their despair but by affirming their worth. Even when they are suffering. Even when they are vulnerable. Even when they are, in worldly terms, a burden. [Emphasis added.]

I urge you to read the whole piece. And I urge the New York State Senate to vote no on abandonment and yes on greater care. Assisted suicide is bad “medicine” and worse public policy.