The Hospice News promotes assisted suicide discussions.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

I receive daily updates from the Hospice News. Usually this news service provides updates about funding issues, legislative initiatives or it will report on the business of Hospice. 

The August 13 Hospice News update featured an article written by Holly Vossel titled: Medical Aid in Dying Laws: What Hospices Need to Know?

The article is written in a neutral manner and begins with information. The articles states that 11 US states have legalized assisted suicide, that Delaware is the most recent state to legalize assisted suicide and New York is considering assisted suicide. The article doesn't state that the New York bill passed in the legislature and is held up by Governor Kathy Hochel who is deliberating on whether or not to veto the bill.

Vossel quotes Jessica Empeño, national director for clinical engagement at Compassion & Choices, America's leading assisted suicide lobby group, who states:

Discussions about medically assisted deaths can allow for greater insight into some of the unmet patient needs, such as unmanageable symptoms and the sources of discomfort or distress, Empeño indicated. Even questions related to MAID can “open the door” to valuable conversations about what’s most important to patients and their families, which can improve goal-concordant care delivery, she stated.

From a neutral point of view Empeño is correct that discussions about assisted suicide can provide insight into unmet patient needs, such as unmanageable symptoms and the sources of discomfort or distress, but Empeño is wanting Hospices to discuss assisted suicide with patients to create greater demand for assisted suicide and normalize it as a Hospice "option."

Vossel then quotes Yelena Zatulovsky, vice president of patient experience at AccentCare who states:

“We have policies and protocols in place on how to have conversations related to MAID, and these have evolved a lot,” Zatulovsky said. “For questions related to medical aid in dying, it’s having a solid, very strong process so that our teams feel equipped and empowered to handle any kind of ethical dilemma. Ultimately, everything around these are nuanced cases — the complexities, the challenges, the discord, the stigmatization — is related to conversation. It’s about what their good death looks like.”

Essentially this article urges Hospices to contact Compassion & Choices for training related to discussions about assisted suicide.

The assisted suicide lobby wants to normalize assisted suicide and Compassion & Choices wants to be the go-to group for training people on assisted suicide.

Let's understand this. 

The group that lobbies to legalize assisted suicide is also the group that would provide information to Hospices about assisted suicide.  

Hospices need to say NO to assisted suicide.

White House: Assisted suicide is "state-subsidised suicide."

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, 

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Telegraph reported on June 26, 2025 that the US State Department stated that the British Parliament passing of the Leadbeater assisted suicide bill is "supporting state-subsidised suicide." 

The British assisted suicide bill passed on June 20, 2025 by a vote of 314 to 291 and will soon be debated in the British House of Lords.

The Telegraph reported that the US State Department sent this message to the British Parliament:

“As the UK Parliament considers support for state-subsidised suicide, euphemistically called a Bill for ‘terminally ill adults’ the United States reaffirms the sanctity of life,” the US bureau of democracy, human rights and labour said.

“The Western world should stand for life, vitality and hope over surrender and death.”

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is pleased with the clear statement from the US State Department. 

We are also asking our supporters to urge New York Governor Kathy Hochul to veto the New York assisted suicide bill that passed in the New York Assembly on April 29, 2025 and in the New York Senate on June 9, 2025. The bill has not been signed by Governor Hochul yet. 

We need to urge Governor Hochul to reject state-subsidised suicide - veto assisted suicide bill A136/S138 (Link to contact Governor Hochul)

New York faces a "slippery slope" with assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Christine Gauthier

Hollie McKay published an interesting article in the New York Sun on June 22, 2025 warning of the slippery slope that is likely to happen if New York implements it's assisted suicide bill.

McKay begins her article by interviewing Canadian veteran Christine Gauthier:

Christine Gauthier, a disabled Canadian veteran, says she was“completely shocked” when a government caseworker several years ago offered her medical aid in dying instead of basic disability support. As New York considers a similar path, her story serves as a stark warning.

“I was really depressed because of what I have been through,”Ms. Gauthier tells The New York Sun. “You won’t give me the equipment I need to live but will let me die. It was surreal.”

A former artillery expert who served during the Gulf War, Ms.Gauthier suffered irreversible spinal damage during military training in 1989. Despite undergoing multiple surgeries and competing in the 2016 Paralympics and Invictus Games, she says she’s spent the past several years fighting for a wheelchair ramp and other basic accommodations.

McKay explains that if New York's Governor Hochul does not veto the assisted suicide bill that has passed in New York's Assembly and Senate then similar stories could happen in New York.

Alex Schadenberg

McKay interviewed me, Alex Schadenberg, about the New York assisted suicide bill:

“The New York assisted suicide bill is wider than most assisted suicide laws because it does not have a waiting period and it does not have a residency requirement. The lack of a residency requirement fulfills the goal of the assisted suicide lobby that anyone in America can die by assisted suicide,” the executive director at the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, Alex Schadenberg, tells the Sun.

“And the no waiting period means that a person can have a same-day death.”

McKay also reported that I said:

Mr. Schadenberg added that in many cases, both the evaluating doctors and the second assessors are closely tied to assisted suicide organizations, weakening oversight.

“There is no independent third party ensuring the law is being followed,” he said, highlighting that both eligibility and oversight are undermined, with many doctors involved in the process directly referred by pro-assisted suicide organizations.

Jessica Rodgers

McKay also received comments from Jessica Rodgers, director of the Patients Rights Action Fund:

Critics warn that once assisted death is legalized, eligibility often broadens beyond initial guardrails. “In states where assisted suicide is legal, the eligibility has expanded in practice — even without voters or lawmakers changing the laws,”

McKay explains what has happened in Canada:

While New York’s proposed law includes more restrictions than Canada’s, critics often point north to highlight how safeguards can erode. Canada’s “medical assistance in dying” program was legalized in 2016 for adults with incurable conditions and was expanded in 2021 to include those without terminal illnesses. By 2023, more than 15,000 people died through MAID — accounting for roughly one in every 20 deaths in Canada.

That’s five times higher than when the law was first enacted in2016, raising concerns that the expansion of eligibility may be fueling the rise

Canada’s MAID law is now among the most permissive globally, and by 2027 it will include patients with mental illness as their sole condition — even in the absence of any physical disease. Most recipients cite severe pain, loss of dignity, or inability to enjoy life as primary reasons for ending their lives. Canadian media have also documented cases where people sought MAID due to poverty, lack of housing, or inadequate disability benefits.

McKay examines the issue of whether or not suicide rates are affected by the legalization of assisted suicide. I responded:

“When comparing the suicide rate in the Netherlands to other European countries that have not legalized assisted death, you notice an increase in the suicide rate in the Netherlands and a decrease in the suicide rate in countries that have not legalized,” noted Mr. Schadenberg.

McKay looks further into the issue and writes:

Contrary to early hopes, legalizing assisted dying has reportedly not reduced overall suicide rates. A 2021 study in Oregon shows a 32 percent increase in the general suicide rate since legalization. European data point to similar trends— with countries like Belgium, after euthanasia legalization in 2002, reporting by 2016 the highest non-assisted suicide rate in women across Europe. In Switzerland, the female suicide rate, including assisted deaths, nearly doubled between 1998 and 2017. Assisted death has been legal since 1941, with statistics tracked since 1998. 

McKay interviews an assisted suicide lobby leader who emphasizes the support for assisted suicide in New York. McKay refers to my interview and states:

“The concept that assisted suicide is about compassion or autonomy is simply not true. These laws work by giving doctors the right in law to be involved with causing your death. That isn’t autonomy,” said Mr. Schadenberg.

“Once it is decided that death can be an answer to a difficult human condition, then it becomes discriminatory to deny it to others in a similar condition. The reality is that people can die a peaceful death without being killed. This should be the focus because this is what people want.”

McKay ends her article with a quote from Christine Gauthier:

For the likes of Ms. Gauthier, however, basic needs to get through daily life would be a long-awaited step in the right direction.

“Things are not really moving; I am back to not being able to use the elevator. I have to deal with that on top of the medical and emotional effects of it all,” she added. “I am still waiting for the surgeries. I am still isolated, so I haven’t been able to hear from anyone much.”

Links to similar articles:

• Physicians group urges New York Governor to veto assisted suicide bill (Link).
• Veterans Affairs offers euthanasia to a former Paralympian (Link).

Physicians group urges New York Governor to veto assisted suicide bill.

Dear Governor Hochul,

My name is Dr Sharon Quick and I am President of Physicians for Compassionate Care Education Foundation (PCCEF), an organization without religious or political affiliation that advocates for the vulnerable at end of life. I have expertise in pediatric anesthesia, critical care, and medical ethics. We oppose A 136. Please veto this poorly constructed bill.

Summary: A 136, like other medically-assisted suicide laws, inevitably violates (rather than upholds) patient autonomy; creates (based on subjective, often inaccurate, criteria) a class of marginalized patients with the disability of terminal illness from whom the standard of medical care can be withheld; allows lethal drugs to unnecessarily substitute for good palliative care and pain control; disproportionately preys on those with mental health problems and disabilities; and destroys the foundation of medical ethics, creating distrust among patients and the health care profession. In addition, A 136 is the most radical policy in the country because it has no waiting period for obtaining lethal drugs. It also has no residency requirement which could turn New York into an international assisted suicide tourism destination for one-stop lethal drug prescriptions. Will New York citizens have to pay for funerals and/or transport of bodies back to their home states and countries? The bill makes no provision for the fact that out-of-state citizens or non-citizens may be pressured to take lethal drugs immediately and they are not required to make funeral and burial arrangements.

1. Pain should never be a reason to seek lethal drugs. Complaints of excessive symptoms indicate doctors lack palliative care knowledge, such as when to refer to pain management specialists. Lethal drugs should never be a solution for lack of education. In addition, those in significant pain lack capacity to consent for lethal drugs. Instead, improve palliative care access and expertise, which has been assessed as likely insufficient to meet the needs of New York.1 There is evidence that minorities, the uninsured, those on Medicaid, and those living in disadvantaged communities may encounter barriers to receiving palliative care.2 It would be a tragedy for these under served populations if this legislation made lethal prescriptions more accessible than palliative care.

2. This bill has no waiting period to obtain lethal drugs; no other law is so rash. Immediate death does not give adequate time for appropriate discussion and interventions for vulnerable patients who make rash decisions out of fear, depression, embarrassment, subtle pressure by a tired caregiver who makes them feel like a burden, or other reversible or transient concerns. Such patients often change their minds and no longer want to hasten death.

3. Physicians may be wrong about a patient’s prognosis, and they often miss depression and compromised decision-making capacity. Patients in WA and OR have died up to 5 years beyond their original “terminal” diagnosis and receipt of lethal drugs. Neither mental health status nor capacity are required to be assessed immediately before a patient ingests lethal drugs, which could be years after initial assessment; there is no guarantee that patients are not compromised at that time.

4. Lethal drugs are not a proportionate means of achieving palliative care goals but devalue vulnerable patients in a way that violates the very goals palliative care aims to achieve. Assisted suicide is abandonment, not health care, and is not part of palliative medicine. Lethal cocktails are bitter-tasting, sometimes mouth-burning liquids, and patients must ice their mouths with popsicles and take anti-emetics just to get them down. Risks include nausea, vomiting, aspiration, seizures, and not dying. Palliative care can do far better.

5. Lethal drug prescriptions undermine autonomy and discriminate against the disability community. Requests for lethal drugs are not primarily for pain but because of depression and/or psychological responses to disabilities developed during terminal illness--which is itself a disability by both social security and ADA criteria. This bill grants new choices and power to doctors, not patients, allowing them to treat patients unequally, subjectively placing them into either (1) a protected group (getting standard mental health care) or (2) a marginalized group with the disability of terminal illness (who can be abandoned to lethal drugs). This discriminates against the disability community and undermines autonomy by violating equality of persons. New York does not need a two-tiered health system that devalues those with the disability of terminal illness.

6. The slippery slope is real. Patients with depression and those with non-terminal diagnoses of anorexia, hernia, arthritis, and “medical complications” have received lethal drugs. Hundreds of doctors’ and patients’ consent forms are missing in Washington and Colorado.

a. In 2023, Oregonian Cody Sontag decided to avoid advanced dementia by killing herself via voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (called VSED). An Oregon doctor declared her “terminally ill” due to dehydration from VSED. He waived the waiting period, prescribed lethal drugs immediately, and Cody died from them.(3) Dehydration is not “incurable” or “irreversible,” as legally required. How many others with non-terminal diagnoses have used VSED to access lethal drugs? No one—least of all physicians whom the vulnerable must be able to trust—should be granted god-like powers to decide which disabilities make life worthless, prey on those who lack capacity, and assist with termination of those so judged.

7. There is no mechanism to enforce the law or detect abuse, which is perhaps why no sanctions have been reported. The design of this bill, like other assisted suicide laws, is a set-up for undetected elder abuse, coercion, or murder, given neither capacity re-evaluation nor the presence a neutral party are required when patients ingest lethal drugs (sometimes weeks, months, or years after initial evaluation).

8. Doctors often devalue those with disabilities. Protect the medical profession from acting on that bias by not granting them power to assist the suicides of patients disabled by terminal illness—especially a bill that has no more oversight than Oregon, where physicians are not disciplined for ending the lives of those with non-terminal illness (like Cody).

9. Protect the medical profession from distrust, both between patients and their doctors and among doctors. Patients in the northwest who are opposed to assisted suicide now have legitimate fears that doctors might overlook depression or compromised capacity, devalue them, and prescribe lethal drugs if they request hastened death while depressed or in a moment of vulnerable weakness. A death request is often a plea for help, and people often change their minds about hastening death with time, treatment, and support. Dr. Bentz lost trust in colleagues after referring a patient to an oncologist who, over Dr. Bentz’ objections, gave lethal drugs to his patient instead of treating his depression.

10. This bill contains potential conscience violations for physicians and health care employers:

a. Requires falsifying the death certificate, naming the underlying disease as the cause, rather than the actual cause of death—lethal drugs (p. 12, lines 12-14)

b. It is unclear whether an objecting health care employer can prohibit physician employees from providing information about lethal drug provision or referring patients for them, or whether objecting physicians could be forced to inform or refer for this process, both of which would violate their conscience for participation in an unethical practice that is not medical care.

11. Finally, participants do not need to be New York residents, which may allow persons out-of-state (or country) to obtain lethal drugs. These patients may not receive adequate evaluation, especially of capacity and lack of coercion, by New York physicians who may not know them well. Non-residents would be pressured to take the lethal drugs immediately in New York to avoid legal complications from ingestion in their home state/country, when many patients hold on to the drugs for weeks, months, and even years, and some never take them. New York may become an international assisted suicide tourism destination.

Please veto A 136. I am happy to answer any questions you may have.

Sincerely,
Sharon Quick, MD, MA (Bioethics)
President, Physicians for Compassionate Care Education Foundation (PCCEF)

P.O. Box 7122 Bonney Lake WA 98491 Tel: 253-501-7011 or info@pccef.org, www.pccef.org

1. CAPC. Palliative Care in New York. 2025. (Link)
2. Chambers B. How to Increase Awareness and Reduce Gaps in Palliative Care for MinoritiesJuly 9, 2020. (Link) (accessed 9-22-2024).
3. Pope TM, Brodoff L. Medical aid in dying to avoid late-stage dementia. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 2024: 1-7. (Link).

The legalization of assisted suicide is not “inevitable.”

Meghan Schrader

By Meghan Schrader

Meghan is an instructor at E4 - University of Texas (Austin) and an EPC-USA board member.

Unfortunately, New York’s senate has voted to legalize assisted suicide, and the bill now goes to the governor’s desk. In order to ask the governor to veto the legislation, contact her. If you live in New York and can get to the capital building, please consider paying the governor’s office a visit to explain why assisted suicide will exacerbate the world’s pattern of systemic ableism.

With regard to that pattern, it’s not shocking that New York legislators would ignore the disabled community’s opposition to this policy. Despite New York’s protestations of progressivism, the state has not been particularly kind to its disabled community: the governor calling home care services a “racket,” the governor giving a speech in which the only time she mentioned disabled people was to promote increased institutionalization to stop gun violence, Andrew Cuomo allowing Covid 19 to run rampant through nursing home facilities, New York candidate Andrew Yang suggesting institutionalizing people with psychiatric disabilities so they do no harm property values, and the subway system being largely inaccessible to disabled people. In 2021 the director of New York’s ACLU delusionally said that her organization had been advocating for disabled people “for decades,” even though NYCLU’s webpage of disability rights commentary goes back only to 2020; three of the commentaries being about how wonderful “MAiD” is for the disabled community. NYCLU apparently does not care about the input from disability rights groups that really have been advocating for disability rights for decades; the national ACLU did not create a disability rights division until 2012, ninety two years after the organization was founded. So, if you are a disabled New Yorker who gets institutionalized, or your disability can become terminal without the correct support and people around you pressure you to die by assisted suicide don’t worry, the ACLU will be there for you in nine decades.

But if New York’s governor does sign its assisted suicide bill, I don’t see why New York has to doom the rest of the country. I think some opponents are likely feeling demoralized by the fear that assisted suicide being legalized in New York means it will inevitably be legalized throughout the country. If we give up and let the proponents just march in wherever they feel like it, sure, but there’s no reason why we have to do that.

It is sad that the proponents may achieve a victory in New York, but there would still be 38 states that have not legalized assisted suicide. Despite the movement of SB138 in New York, the anti assisted suicide movement still has important tools at its disposal. There is still the United Spinal lawsuit in California, and I think we have a good chance at succeeding if we can get SCOTUS to take the case.

The American Association of Suicidology’s 2023 “retirement” of its 2017 “MAiD is not suicide” statement is a huge win for us. The American Medical Association’s reaffirmation of its opposition to assisted suicide is another significant victory.

So, don’t throw in the towel. The legalization of assisted suicide is not “inevitable.” Re-double the time you spend on the issue. Look for ways in which such policies can be corrected. And this is one of the most important things I can reiterate: make sure members of the anti assisted suicide movement are working together to ensure disabled people everywhere have the support we need to flourish: a strong social support system, excellent mental health services, a good education, accessible employment, etc. These things provide a bulwark against the ableist degradation that leads to suicide, both assisted an unassisted.

Testimony of Dr Sharon Quick: In opposition to New York assisted suicide bill.

Testimony of Sharon Quick, MD, MA (Bioethics)

President, Physicians for Compassionate Care Education (PCCEF)

In opposition to New York A 136 June 8, 2024

I am President of Physicians for Compassionate Care Education Foundation (PCCEF), an organization without religious or political affiliation that advocates for the vulnerable at end of life. I have expertise in pediatric anesthesia, critical care, and medical ethics. We oppose A 136.

Summary: A 136, like other medically-assisted suicide laws, inevitably violates (rather than upholds) patient autonomy; creates (based on subjective, often inaccurate, criteria) a class of marginalized patients with the disability of terminal illness from whom the standard of medical care can be withheld; allows lethal drugs to unnecessarily substitute for good palliative care and pain control; disproportionately preys on those with mental health problems and disabilities; and destroys the foundation of medical ethics, creating distrust among patients and the health care profession. In addition, A 136 is the most radical policy in the country because it has no waiting period for obtaining lethal drugs.

1. Pain should never be a reason to seek lethal drugs. Complaints of excessive symptoms indicate doctors lack palliative care knowledge, such as when to refer to pain management specialists. Lethal drugs should never be a solution for lack of education. In addition, those in significant pain lack capacity to consent for lethal drugs. Instead, improve palliative care access and expertise, which has been assessed as likely insufficient to meet the needs of New York.(1) There is evidence that minorities, the uninsured, those on Medicaid, and those living in disadvantaged communities may encounter barriers to receiving palliative care.(2) It would be a tragedy for these under served populations if this legislation made lethal prescriptions more accessible than palliative care.

2. This bill has no waiting period to obtain lethal drugs; no other law is so rash. Immediate death does not give adequate time for appropriate discussion and interventions for vulnerable patients who make rash decisions out of fear, depression, embarrassment, subtle pressure by a tired caregiver who makes them feel like a burden, or other reversible or transient concerns. Such patients often change their minds and no longer want to hasten death. Terminal illness is highly associated with depression, and suicidal thinking is highest when cancer is first diagnosed and becomes less frequent as time goes on and patients get support.

3. Physicians may be wrong about a patient’s prognosis, and they often miss depression and compromised decision-making capacity. Patients in WA and OR have died up to 5 years beyond their original “terminal” diagnosis and receipt of lethal drugs. Neither mental health status nor capacity are required to be assessed immediately before a patient ingests lethal drugs, which could be years after initial assessment; there is no guarantee that patients are not compromised at that time. 

4. Lethal drugs are not a proportionate means of achieving palliative care goals but devalue vulnerable patients in a way that violates the very goals palliative care aims to achieve. Assisted suicide is abandonment, not health care, and is not part of palliative medicine. Lethal cocktails are bitter-tasting, sometimes mouth-burning liquids, and patients must ice their mouths with popsicles and take anti-emetics just to get them down. Risks include nausea, vomiting, aspiration, seizures, and not dying. Palliative care can do far better.

5. Lethal drug prescriptions undermine autonomy and discriminate against the disability community. Requests for lethal drugs are not primarily for pain but because of concerns of losing autonomy or abilities or feeling like a burden. These may be symptoms of depression and are usually psychological responses to disabilities developed during terminal illness--which is itself a disability by both social security and ADA criteria. This bill grants new choices and power to health practitioners, not patients, allowing them to treat patients unequally, subjectively placing them into either (1) a protected group (getting standard mental health care) or (2) a marginalized group with the disability of terminal illness (who can be abandoned to lethal drugs). This discriminates against the disability community and undermines autonomy by violating equality of persons. New York does not need a two-tiered health system that devalues those with the disability of terminal illness. 

6. The slippery slope is real. Patients with depression and those with non-terminal diagnoses of anorexia, hernia, arthritis, and “medical complications” have received lethal drugs. Hundreds of doctors’ and patients’ consent forms are missing in Washington and Colorado.

a. In 2023, a dementia diagnosis led Cody Sontag to voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (called VSED) to kill herself. An Oregon doctor said dehydration from VSED would soon cause death; he waived the waiting period, prescribed lethal drugs, and Cody died from them.(3) Dehydration is not “incurable” or “irreversible,” as legally required. How many others with non-terminal diagnoses have used VSED to access lethal drugs? No one—least of all physicians whom the vulnerable must be able to trust—should be granted god-like powers to decide which disabilities make life worthless, prey on those who lack capacity, and assist with termination of those so judged.

7. There is no mechanism to enforce the law or detect abuse, which is perhaps why no sanctions have been reported. The design of this bill, like other assisted suicide laws, is a set-up for undetected elder abuse, coercion, or murder, given neither capacity re-evaluation nor the presence a neutral party are required when patients ingest lethal drugs (sometimes weeks, months, or years after initial evaluation).

8. Doctors often devalue those with disabilities. Protect the medical profession from acting on that bias by not granting them power to assist the suicides of patients disabled by terminal illness—especially a law with so little oversight that physicians are not disciplined for ending the lives of those with non-terminal illness (like Cody).

9. Protect the medical profession from distrust, both between patients and their doctors and among doctors. Patients in the northwest who are opposed to assisted suicide now have legitimate fears that doctors might overlook depression or compromised capacity, devalue them, and prescribe lethal drugs if they request hastened death while depressed or in a moment of vulnerable weakness. A death request is often a plea for help, and people often change their minds about hastening death with time, treatment, and support. Dr. Bentz lost trust in colleagues after referring a patient to an oncologist who, over Dr. Bentz’ objections, gave lethal drugs to his patient instead of treating his depression.

10. This bill contains potential conscience violations for physicians and health care employers:

a. Requires falsifying the death certificate, naming the underlying disease as the cause, rather than the actual cause of death—lethal drugs (p. 12, lines 12-14)
b. It is unclear whether an objecting health care employer can prohibit physician employees from providing information about lethal drug provision or referring patients for them, both of which would violate their conscience as participation in an unethical practice that is not medical care.
c. It is unclear whether objecting physicians could be forced to inform or refer for this process in violation of their conscience.

11. Finally, participants do not need to be New York residents, which may allow out-of-state residents to obtain lethal drugs. These participants may not receive adequate evaluation, especially of capacity and lack of coercion, by New York physicians who may not know them well. Because non-residents would be forced to take the lethal drugs in New York, it may pressure patients to take the lethal drugs immediately, when many patients hold on to the drugs for weeks, months, and even years, and some decide never to take them. Given the number of people who travel to New York from around the world, this may make New York an international assisted suicide tourism destination.

Please vote no on A 136. I am happy to answer any questions you may have.

Sincerely,
Sharon Quick, MD, MA (Bioethics)
President, Physicians for Compassionate Care Education Foundation (PCCEF)

1. CAPC. Palliative Care in New York. 2025. (Link).
2. Chambers B. How to Increase Awareness and Reduce Gaps in Palliative Care for Minorities July 9, 2020. (Link) (accessed 9-22-2024).
3. Pope TM, Brodoff L. Medical aid in dying to avoid late-stage dementia. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 2024: 1-7. (Link).

Alert: New York Assisted Suicide bill to be voted-on today.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

New York, assisted suicide Bill A136/S138 passed in the New York Assembly by a vote of 81 to 67 on April 29 and may soon be debated in the state Senate. We have urged supporters to contact the members of the New York State Senate.

The New York bill is particularly loose in it's language. But what makes New York's bill even more egregious is that:

1. The bill does not have a reflecton period. A person's bad day can be their last day.
The bill requires the person to have the assessor confirm that there is a "terminal condition" with a 6 month prognosis to die. "Terminal condition" includes diabetes and eating disorders. Without a reflection period, there is no opportunity to rethink the deadly irreversible decision.

2. There is no residency requirement. The New York bill allows anyone from anywhere to die by assisted suicide in New York.

The New York assisted suicide bill may come up as early as TOMORROW (Monday) for a floor vote.

Senator Name                               Email                                                 Albany Office                   

Andrea Stewart-Cousins      scousins@nysenate.gov                     518-455-2585

Andrew Gounardes               gounardes@nysenate.gov                 518-455-3270

Brian Kavanagh                     kavanagh@nysenate.gov                   518-455-2625

Jamaal Bailey                         senatorjbailey@nysenate.gov           518-455-2061

John Liu                                  liu@nysenate.gov                                 518-455-2210

Joseph Addabbo                    addabbo@nysenate.gov                      518-455-2322

Kevin Parker                           parker@nysenate.gov                         518-455-2580

Patricia Fahy                          Fahy@nysenate.gov                             518-455-2225

Shelley Mayer                         smayer@nysenate.gov                         518-455-2031

Toby Ann Stavisky                 stavisky@nysenate.gov                       518-455-3461

 

Tell them that you oppose assisted suicide and this assisted suicide bill is particularly dangerous because it lacks a reflection period and there is no residency requirement.

Because the New York bill does not have a residency requirement, all of our loved ones are at risk from the dangers of assisted suicide passing in New York State even if they don't live there. Remember, when assisted suicide bills pass, it is often by just one or two votes. Your voice really does make a difference! 

As bad as the New York assisted suicide bill is the assisted suicide lobby has expanded existing assisted suicide legislation in nearly every state that has legalized assisted suicide. 

Oregon allows physicians to wave the waiting period and Oregon has also eliminated the residency requirement. Vermont is permitting assisted suicide by telehealth, they are forcing medical practitioners who oppose assisted suicide to refer patients and they eliminated the residency requirement. Washington state,  California, Colorado and Hawaii have also expanded their assisted suicide laws.

Once assisted suicide is legal, the assisted suicide lobby will work to further expand the law. The original assisted suicide bill is designed to pass in the legislature, once passed incremental extensions will follow.

The push to legalize and extend assisted suicide in America

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

EPC is very concerned with the threat to legalize assisted suicide in the states of Illinois and New York and the expansion of assisted suicide laws, where it is already legal.

In New York, assisted suicide Bill A136/S138 passed in the New York Assembly by a vote of 81 to 67 on April 29 and may soon be debated in the state Senate. We have urged supporters to contact the members of the New York State Senate and in particular the New York State Senate Health Committee (Link to Senate Health Committee).

In Illinois, assisted suicide Bill SB9 passed on April 9, 2025 by a vote of 8 to 3 in the Senate Executive Committee. Bill SB9 stalled but was renewed when it's sponsor attached the assisted suicide bill to a food preparation safety bill (SB 1950).

On May 29, 2025 SB 1950 passed in the State House by a vote of 63 to 42.

The good news is that SB 1950 has temporarily stalled as the Illinois Senate adjourned.

It is ironic that a bill whereby physicians prescribe a lethal poison cocktails to kill patients would get attached to a food preparation safety bill.

Oregon's assisted suicide expansion Bill SB 1003 will be heard in committee next week. Oregon assisted suicide Bill SB 1003:

1. Requires promotion by Healthcare facilities – The bill forces hospices and hospitals to publicly disclose whether they participate in assisted suicide. Hospices must tell patients upfront and post their policies online, while other healthcare facilities must at least post their stance online. In some cases, family members have pressured vulnerable patients to participate in assisted suicide. This disclosure requirement makes it easier for patients to be directed toward facilities that will not object.
2. Removes the 15-day waiting period – The current waiting period in Oregon to provides a proper evaluation prior to prescribing lethal poison drugs. The bill removes this waiting period allowing patients to be shuffled to death on demand within 48 hours.

The assisted suicide lobby has expanded existing assisted suicide legislation in nearly every state that has legalized assisted suicide. 

Oregon has already allowed physicians to wave the waiting period and Oregon has eliminated the residency requirement. Vermont is permitting assisted suicide by telehealth, they are forcing medical practitioners who oppose assisted suicide to refer patients and they eliminated the residency requirement. Washington state, California, Colorado and Hawaii have also expanded their assisted suicide laws.

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.

Disability Advocate: I urge you to oppose New York's assisted suicide bill.

Dear Legislators:

Meghan Schrader

As a disability justice advocate, I urge you to oppose assisted suicide Bill SB138.

I teach people with disabilities at the University of Texas at Austin and have published research on how assisted suicide connects to America’s deep history of eugenics and systemic ableism.

Although New York assisted suicide Bill SB 138 is aimed at terminally ill people, the right to die movement, that  it is attached to, dehumanizes and oppresses people with disabilities. The best way to safeguard against that oppression is not to pass assisted suicide laws. 

A disabled Canadian friend of mine with PTSD and severe chronic pain was subjected to further wounding trauma when a suicide prevention hotline operator told her that she should consider killing herself with “MAiD.” The New York bill would lay the scaffolding for the proponents to build that same world. I would be happy to talk to you more about my friend’s experience or anything else in this email. 

The United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on the Rights of People with Disabilities says that even assisted suicide laws that are limited to the terminally ill violate its Convention on The Rights of People with Disabilities (Link)

Compassion & Choices (C & C) acknowledged that an eating disorder specialist who published a case study about helping people with eating disorders be killed by assisted suicide abused the law (Link to Study) (Link to C & C response) and yet representatives of C & C say that these laws have never been abused. So, has the law been abused or not?

Right to die movement leader Thaddeus Mason Pope tweeted to me that he thinks it’s good for disabled people to die by suicide. (Twitter Link) The director of Compassion and Choices appeared on Dr. Phil with Thaddeus Mason Pope in January of 2023.

One proponent of this bill is a man named Christopher Riddle, who claims to be a “disability rights advocate.” Please listen to the voices of the many disability rights organizations opposing this bill instead of him. Riddle’s theories about disability rights have been reasonably criticized as lacking any empirical grounding in the experiences of disabled people. He has no experience or personal stake in the practical implications of his ideas. (Link to Book) (Link to Book Review)

Furthermore, Riddle’s scholarship dehumanizes disabled people who are harmed by assisted suicide; he frames anyone who might be harmed by assisted suicide as the equivalent of a car accident statistic. He asserts that harm that assisted suicide might cause for people with disabilities “ought not to be of special concern.” (https://philpapers.org/rec/RIDAD).

Hence, Riddle is willing to sacrifice people with disabilities for the right to die movement’s agenda; he is not the “disability rights advocate” he claims to be.

For a more accurate understanding of how assisted suicide has and will impact disabled people, I encourage you to watch a video created by disability studies ethicist Harold Braswell about disability rights opposition to assisted suicide. Braswell has studied the right to die issue extensively. (Link to Brawell research)

The American Association of Suicidology made a 2017 statement saying that assisted suicide is not suicide. But in 2023 the AAS had to retract that statement (Link to retracted statement) because it was used in the 2019 Truchon decision that expanded assisted suicide to disabled Canadians. (https://twitter.com/TrudoLemmens/status/1666067817035190272), which was opposed by the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention. (CASP statement) The consequences of the AAS’s statement are an example of how green lighting assisted suicide for the terminally ill easily results in violence against people with disabilities.

Disabled people already experience a higher rate of suicide than the general population and peer-reviewed research indicates that people are more likely to think suicide is acceptable if the victim has a disability. (Link to research) 

Passing assisted suicide laws further normalizes the sentiment that disabled people’s suicides might be a good thing, and that’s a monstrous way for society to bully people in the disabled community. 

You can find videos from many disability justice leaders opposing the legislation of assisted suicide at these links:

Disabled writer Brian Koukol: (Information Link).

Professor of Musicology and Disability Studies Andrew Dell’Antonio: (Information Link).

United Nations speaker with Down Syndrome and disability justice advocate Charlotte Fiene: (Information Link).

Disability Equality in Education board member Lisa Aquila: (Information Link).

My program director Joe Tate has a long history of advocating for people with intellectual disabilities, including participating in a 2014 ADAPT protest outside a Chicago conference of the World Federation of Right To Die Societies: (Information Link).

I urge you to allow Bill SB 138 to die in this session because regardless of its content, it rewards a movement that is hostile to people with disabilities. Exacerbating the oppression that disabled people already face so that the proponents can plan their deaths is unwise and unjust.

Equality, justice, love and the equal citizenship of people with disabilities are more important than the proponents’ individual autonomy. Please do not support this bill.

Sincerely,
Meghan Schrader