NY Medical Aid in Dying Act

The NY Daily News provides op-eds on both sides of the Medical Aid in Dying bill. 

The supporter uses his dad's experience to argue that people should have the choice, unlike his dad (who supported the policy). I agree with his overall sentiments and would like (when the time comes) to control my fate. Suffering the indignities and pains present now horrifies me. 

It’s about mercy. It’s about allowing terminally ill people to meet death the way they lived: with agency, with dignity, with love.

Passing the Medical Aid in Dying Act won’t stop death. Death is coming, regardless. What it will do is stop unnecessary suffering.

The other side is put forth by a bioethical professor and moral theology fellow at St. Joseph's Seminary. It is hard to avoid the assumption that the other side (in a same sex marriage) and this person partially disagree on religious grounds. These things significantly turn on moral choices.

One argument to me is misleading at best:

Time after time, disabled populations showed us to testify before various committees about how, when we make judgements about which populations should be able to legally kill themselves, we make judgements about the value of disabled lives.

Where does that take you? We currently have the right to refuse treatment. Should this too be denied to protect the disabled? Do disabled people have an obligation to suffer to protect disabled people from mistreatment? "We" are not making the ultimate judgments here. "I" (individuals) am. 

Since the 1990s, physical pain hasn’t made the top five reasons people in Oregon request PAS. Instead, the requests come because of fear of loss of autonomy, fear of loss of enjoyable activities, and fear of being a burden on others. Disabled activists ask: Does this remind you of anyone? You’re suggesting that you can understand why people like us should want to kill themselves!

The same replies can be made here. Furthermore, they are valid reasons, especially the loss of autonomy. I put aside that "Oregon" is not the only place with the right to physician-assisted suicide. 

Finally, slipping slopes are a parlor game. There is an additional line here. We are not just talking "disabled," which is an open-ended term. We are talking "terminally ill."  

But perhaps their most important argument is that PAS is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer. Once violence and killing can be seen as part of what a physician does, a coherent concept of health care simply falls apart — and it simply becomes just another kind of market transaction.

People are allowed to determine what types of treatment are provided. Physicians carry out their wishes. Is a DNR "fundamentally incompatible" too?

Terminal care involves death and dying. It is also question begging if euthanasia ("good death") is "violence" and/or if it is not part of "health care." The ability to have it as an option repeatedly reassures people who do not ultimately choose that path. Mental health is part of health care. 

And the "market transaction" part is just plain a red herring. Health care NOW is a market transaction. Adding this option does not somehow inherently make it less or more of one. 

was associated with a 6.3 percent increase in total suicides

The link provides various numbers, including a lower number for Canada. There can be a range of reasons for the two to be "associated." There are various ways, besides removing choice in terminal care, to address that. Since some people label euthanasia as "suicide," I am also concerned about classification. 

The number appears rather low, anyhow. Plus, individual liberty should not be blocked just because some people will handle it badly. Not a reason on its own to stop the bill.  

The bill has passed the assembly and now has to pass the Senate. Polls suggest that the people support it in large numbers. The opponent seeks the governor's veto. It would be an abuse of the veto power to have one person override the state legislature and the people's will on such thin arguments.