The Patients’ Rights Action Fund, a national disability rights organization and member of the New York Alliance Against Assisted Suicide, urgently warns New York legislators: the latest bill (SB 8835), with amendments crafted to secure the governor’s signature, would legalize assisted suicide and put New Yorkers at risk of abandonment by their doctors.

“Legalizing assisted suicide puts vulnerable New Yorkers at extreme risk. This law doesn’t stop at terminal illness, it opens the door for people with disabilities, mental health challenges, and chronic conditions to be abandoned instead of treated.”

— Matt Vallière, President & Executive Director, Patients’ Rights Action Fund

Governor Hochul’s extensive amendments demonstrate that she knows the assisted suicide bill passed last year was faulty and dangerous. Unfortunately, these attempted fixes do nothing to protect patients who want care, but cannot access or afford treatment or other support, and continue to put those with life-threatening disabilities at extreme risk of discrimination. It relies on impossible to predict six-month prognosis, and fails to protect patients from potential coercion or abuse.

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In other states such as Colorado and Oregon, the legalization of assisted suicide has affected patients with disabilities, mental illnesses, and non-terminal diseases — marginalized groups too often dismissed as less deserving of care and treatment. New Yorkers John and Debbie Kempf share a profoundly personal and painful example of what’s at stake for patients and their families. Carly Kempf, their beloved daughter, suffered from anorexia and obsessive-compulsive disorder for nearly two decades.  During this time, while seeking various forms of treatment for Carly, the Kempf’s were frequently instructed by medical providers to “allow her to die in peace.” At the young age of 22, Carly Kempf passed away decades before her time proving that mental illness can masquerade as hopelessness when patients are abandoned:

“Those medical professionals that thought that Carly should be allowed to die in peace, shame on you for not realizing that you were listening to a mental illness that was successful in convincing you that there was no hope for a 15- to 19-year-old adolescent.”
— John and Debbie Kempf, Burnt Hills, NY

The Kempfs and other patient advocates warn that with the new law, New York doctors could take it a step further and offer assisted suicide to patients like Carly.

As other states have recently faced this same life-or-death decision, we are seeing tremendous backlash in response to this legislation. In states like Colorado, California, and Delaware, assisted suicide laws are being challenged in federal courts. New York should put the brakes on this controversial proposal and focus instead on helping patients who need it to access palliative and hospice care.

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