New York Governor Kathy Hochul has announced she will sign legislation legalizing physician-assisted suicide, cloaked in soothing language about “medical aid in dying,” “choice,” and “guardrails.” Her statement claims the law will “shorten not lives, but deaths,” and presents the policy as a compassionate response to suffering.
That framing is not just misleading. It is gaslighting.
Words like aid, dignity, and comfort are being used to mask what the bill actually authorizes: physicians prescribing lethal drug overdoses so patients can end their own lives. This is not care. It is not medicine. It is the intentional facilitation of death, rebranded to quiet moral objections and disarm public scrutiny.
Governor Hochul’s personal story about her mother’s illness evokes sympathy, but it cannot justify a public policy that fundamentally redefines the role of physicians and erodes long-standing protections for the vulnerable. Compassion does not require us to abandon ethical clarity. It requires us to tell the truth.
That truth was laid bare in a recent Pennsylvania Family Institute webinar, Value at the End of Life, which offered sober, expert testimony about the real harms of physician-assisted suicide and why Pennsylvania citizens should be alarmed as similar legislation advances in Harrisburg.
What These Bills Actually Do
Tom Shaheen, Vice President of Policy at Pennsylvania Family Institute, explained that some Pennsylvania lawmakers have again introduced bills to legalize the practice. Current bills are Senate Bill 570 and House Bill 1109. Different titles. Same outcome. Both bills legalize physician-assisted suicide while relying on euphemisms like “compassionate aid in dying” to obscure their effects.
Cardiologist Dr. Joseph Marine cut through the rhetoric. “These bills create a legal process that allows a licensed physician to prescribe a lethal overdose of drugs which have never been approved for this purpose,” he said. “The patient then consumes those drugs as a poison to take their own life.” He emphasized the critical distinction advocates try to blur: this is not hospice or palliative care. Those options already exist and are ethical. Assisted suicide is something else entirely.
Dr. Marine also underscored the ethical collapse such laws represent. The American Medical Association, the American College of Physicians, the World Medical Association, and the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization all oppose physician-assisted suicide. Their conclusion is consistent: it is incompatible with the physician’s role as healer and poses a serious societal risk.
The “Safeguards” Are an Illusion
Clinical pharmacist Dr. Kristen Holt offered chilling details about the drug protocols used in states where assisted suicide is legal. The recommended prescriptions involve massive overdoses, up to 500 times normal clinical doses, of opioids, sedatives, and cardiac drugs. “There’s no doubt the overdose would stop the lungs, the brain, and the heart,” she testified. “The goal here is death.”
Claims about safeguards collapse under scrutiny. Mental health evaluations are not required. Witnesses are often not required. There are no routine audits. Physicians are granted immunity. In many cases, deaths must be recorded as “natural” on death certificates, making meaningful oversight impossible.
Even the six-month prognosis standard is a myth. Dr. Marine noted that studies show 15 percent of hospice patients outlive their six-month prognosis, and many live more than a year. Some even leave hospice entirely. Prognosis is not destiny. Laws built on false certainty invite irreversible mistakes.
Coercion, Discrimination, and Expansion
Perhaps most disturbing is how physician-assisted suicide targets those already at risk. Disability rights advocates overwhelmingly oppose these laws because they send a deadly message: some lives are less worth protecting. Dr. Marine warned that what begins as a “choice” quickly becomes an expectation under economic and social pressure.
The international evidence is damning. In Canada, assisted suicide now accounts for nearly 5 percent of all deaths annually. What began as an option for the terminally ill has expanded to those with disabilities and chronic conditions, with active plans to include mental illness alone. The Netherlands and Belgium show the same pattern, including euthanasia for minors. States such as Colorado and Oregon have followed similar patterns of expansion.
Expansion is not a hypothetical. It is the trajectory.
Why Pennsylvania Must Pay Attention Now
Pennsylvania has resisted physician-assisted suicide for years, but pressure is mounting as neighboring states legalize it. Tom Shaheen warned that while the bills have stalled before, “things can change very quickly,” especially when national advocacy groups flood a state with deceptive messaging backed by high-dollar donors.
That is why education about the truth matters.
The webinar made one thing unmistakably clear: physician-assisted suicide is terrible public policy. It undermines trust in medicine, abandons the vulnerable, and replaces authentic compassion with lethal efficiency.
What You Can Do
Pro-family and pro-life Pennsylvanians cannot afford to be passive observers. Get informed. Learn the facts. Reject the euphemisms. Watch the entire Value at the End of Life webinar and equip yourself to speak truthfully with neighbors, family members, and friends.
Advocates for assisted suicide rely on confusion and emotionally loaded language. Our response must be clarity, courage, and care rooted in reality. Human life deserves protection from the first breath to natural death. Anything less is not compassion. It is surrender.
Watch the recording of the webinar:
