American MAID: New York Issued About 20 Lethal Prescriptions in Just the First Month of Its Assisted-Suicide Law

New York’s Medical Aid in Dying Act has been in effect for a little over a month, and the state still will not say how many people used it.

However, Columbia bioethicist David Hoffman, who works with hospitals and groups implementing the statute, told the New York Sun that he estimates about 20 prescriptions for life-ending drugs have already gone out.

That figure comes from conversations with doctors, not an official Health Department count.

Physicians must report when they write a prescription, but they do not have to say whether the patient took it.

“The state will have the data on a rolling basis. It’s an after-the-fact analysis,” Hoffman told the paper.

The law took effect August 5, after Governor Kathy Hochul signed it in February.

New York is now the 14th U.S. jurisdiction with legalized assisted suicide.

To receive the lethal medication, patients must be 18, state residents, judged to have six months or less to live, and able to decide and take the drugs themselves. Two physicians sign off, and a psychiatric evaluation is required.

There is only a five-day wait between writing the prescription and filling it.

Death certificates list the underlying illness, not suicide.

Assemblyman Andrew Molitor, a Republican, told The Sun that keeping the public “in the dark about how many people have requested and utilized assisted suicide” is bad policy.

Molitor wants socioeconomic status, private insurance versus Medicaid, the diagnosis, when the script was filled, and where it was taken to all be made public.

“The public should be told, at a minimum, what the person’s socio-economic status is, whether they have private health insurance or Medicaid, what was the terminal condition they were diagnosed with, when the prescription was filled and where it was administered,” Molitor said.

In Canada, medical assistance in dying started with people near death, widened to some disabled patients who were not dying, and is scheduled to add mental illness as a sole qualifier in 2027.

By 2024, Canada counted 16,499 MAiD deaths, which amounts to about one in 20 deaths nationwide.

In July 2021, the Psychiatric Times published an article in opposition to assisted suicide and noted that “preliminary reports suggest increased rates of suicide in the general population of states that have legalized PAS (physician-assisted suicide). Specifically, ‘legalizing PAS has been associated with an increased rate of total suicides relative to other [non-PAS] states, and no decrease in non-assisted suicides.’ Similarly, suicide rates in the Netherlands (where medical euthanasia is legal) have accelerated, compared to neighboring countries that have not legalized medical euthanasia.”

They report that physician and ethicist Leon Kass, MD, has pointedly cautioned: “We must care for the dying, not make them dead.”

The American College of Physicians has said, “Physician-assisted suicide is neither a therapy nor a solution to difficult questions raised at the end of life. On the basis of substantive ethics, clinical practice, policy, and other concerns, the ACP does not support the legalization of physician-assisted suicide. … However, through high-quality care, effective communication, compassionate support, and the right resources, physicians can help patients control many aspects of how they live out life’s last chapter.”