New Yorkers received a dubious holiday gift this year.

"New Yorker Governor to sign assisted suicide bill."

Alex Schadenberg

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director
Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Article: New York Governor will sign assisted suicide bill (Link).

Bria Sandford Ramos wrote an excellent article that was published by - The Dispatch on December 23, 2025 titled: Death Comes For New York State.

Sandford Ramos explains:

In a press conference, Hochul said signing the bill was “one of the toughest decisions [she’s] ever made as governor,” acknowledging the concerns of many constituents about the effect the bill could have on the most vulnerable. As originally written, the bill would have made New York’s assisted suicide law one of the most permissive in the country, with no waiting period between request and access to lethal drugs, no required screening for depression, and minimal reporting requirements. Hochul’s signature is conditional upon the passage of amendments designed to tighten requirements and prevent abuse. But even with guardrails, the decision to sanction deliberate self-killing and legalize a procedure that the American Medical Association this summer called “fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as a healer,” is a watershed moment.

Sharon Shapiro-Lacks

Sharon Shapiro-Lacks, a board member for the Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled, who is also a person with a disability told Sandford Ramos in an interview that:

But mercy is not what many people see in physician-assisted suicide. “She really, really did not understand where the disability community was coming from,”... Kathy Hochul could not get that this is not a religious issue, that we were objecting to the systemic issue that doctors would be making the call as to who has a rational cause to want to end their life prematurely.”

Shapiro-Lacks further stated:

While severe pain is often used as a reason to legalize assisted suicide—and is indeed one reason some patients seek it—many requests for lethal doses also come from those who fear loss of independence. Indeed, what many in the disabled community fear is a world where a loss of autonomy is seen as a valid reason to die.

 Shapiro-Lacks, who has been fighting for disability rights for more than 40 years continued:

 “People are more scared of losing their capacities more than of the pain,” ... “Throughout my life, I’ve been told, ‘Oh my, you’re remarkable, I could never live like that. If I had to be in a wheelchair, I don’t know what I would do.’ And that always bothered me, because that kind of inspiration is a backhanded compliment. What it actually says is, ‘I wouldn’t live if I were you.’”

The reality is that legalizing assisted suicide gives medical professionals the right in law to prescribe a lethal poison cocktail to cause your death. No one should be given the right in law to kill others. 

Assisted suicide directly affects people in their time of greatest need, when they are most vulnerable to the suggestion of death as a solution to difficult conditions.

Finally, legalizing assisted suicide does not end the debate. Once assisted suicide is legal, the assisted suicide lobby will lobby or launch court cases to expand the law. The original assisted suicide bill is designed to pass in the legislature, once passed incremental extensions will follow.