2025 OPEN LETTER TO ALL MEMBERS OF THE NEW YORK STATE LEGISLATURE URGING OPPOSITION TO THE MEDICAL AID IN DYING ACT (MAID), S00138, A00136

Feminists Choosing Life of New York, Inc., is a statewide human rights organization that advocates for non-violence from conception to natural death. Our supporters across New York recognize the power of peaceful, life-affirming solutions to the distresses vulnerable people experience.

We believe our elderly, infirm and disabled brothers and sisters, pregnant mothers and their unborn children, as well as every person at risk of suicide, deserve our best resources and protection against human rights violations, including the fundamental right to live free from violent destruction— the most basic human right of every member of the human family.

PROGRESSIVE SOCIETIES DO NOT LEGALLY SANCTION AND FUND

KILLING HUMAN BEINGS

The pending MAID or Assisted Suicide bills threaten to

Violate Human Rights
Significantly Increase Overall Suicide Rates, including Non-Assisted Suicide Rates
Jeopardize Suicide Prevention Efforts

NY’s MAID bills permit doctors to give qualifying people, including teenagers (18 & 19 year olds) a lethal overdose of drugs to self-administer.

Studies show “prognostic error is widespread,“ that doctors charged with determining whether an individual qualifies or is plagued with a terminal illness that will cause death within 6 months have an accuracy rate of only 20%.
There is ample “evidence that patients, including with disabilities, are being denied treatment by insurers and offered assisted suicide instead.” Data reveals that when medical aid in dying is legalized “it immediately becomes the cheapest treatment. Direct coercion is not necessary.” Where insurers “deny or even simply delay approval of expensive life-sustaining treatment,” patients are more susceptible to self-initiated deaths.
The current NY MAID bills allow “abusive caregivers …[to] steer someone toward it, witness the request, pick up the lethal dose, and even, in the end, give the drug- because when the lethal agents are administered, no witnesses are required.”
Research consistently demonstrates the ineffectiveness of ‘safeguards’ in MAID laws, including those contained in NY’s pending MAID bills. Data demonstrates how purported patient ‘protections’ are readily circumvented, and ultimately fail to ensure the mental capacity of potential MAID patients, and to protect them from social, familial and financial pressures to end their own lives– to commit suicide.
Every “prominent national disability organization that takes any position on assisted suicide laws is in opposition.” The American Medical Association (AMA) opposes MAID.

Robust research demonstrates that legalizing assisted suicide is associated with a “significant increase in total suicides,” which includes non-assisted suicides.

Studies show rates of self-initiated deaths increase significantly after the legalization of assisted suicide, and that these rates increase for non-assisted suicides as well.
The increase in suicide rates (assisted and non assisted) where MAID proposals are legalized “disproportionately” impact women.
Research “estimates suggest assisted suicide laws increase total suicide rates by about 18% overall. For women, the estimated increase is 40%.”

Increasing evidence shows that legalizing assisted suicide or MAID is a “threat to suicide prevention.” Suicide prevention programs are effective.

The “suicide rate in New York has increased by 34.9% over the past 20 years”
In NY, suicide is the “2nd leading cause of death for ages 25-34” and the “3rd leading cause of death for ages 10-24.”
Every “16 hours, someone dies from suicide in New York City”

According to recent statistical analysis on suicide in the United States, U.S. suicide rates reached “record highs” in 2024, “rates reaching levels not seen since 1941.” “This marks a concerning 30% increase over the past two decades,” “indicating a persistent upward trend.”

Suicide “deaths among 10- to 24-year-olds increased by 62% from 2007 to 2021.”
Research released during the summer of 2024 “found that suicide is rising dramatically in preteens as young as 8 years old as well, with an 8.2% annual increase from 2008 to 2022.”