Hochul absolutely has to kill the macabre doctor-assisted-suicide bill

Gov. Kathy Hochul must resist the coming push to sign the so-called Medical Aid in Dying Act: New York doesn’t need to turn doctors into killers.

Fans of “assisted suicide” pretend it’s purely about respecting the wishes of terminally ill patients seeking a dignified exit, but medicalized killing never stops there.

Consider Canada, which in 2016 adopted a MAID measure just like what’s proposed in New York — and has kept on “liberalizing” the rules, to include non-terminal severe illness, with the current government now planning to expand MAID to cover purely psychological suffering in 2027.

Right now, MAID already accounts for one in 20 Canadian deaths.

And the macabre trade in organs harvested from MAID beneficiaries is now ramping up.

Anyone who truly wants suicide can find a way; this is about opening the door to state-endorsed death of the most vulnerable, whether disabled, autistic, severely depressed or simply socially “unwanted.”

Hochul musn’t be conned by propaganda ploys like the Public Policy Polling survey that shows 56% of New Yorkers supporting the NY MAID bill, which relied on the proponents’ description of the grisly practice.

Only a tiny sliver of the public actively wants this. As Robert Bellafiore, New York Catholic Conference spokesman, puts it: “If you asked 1,000 random New Yorkers for the top 20 things they want Governor Hochul to do, letting doctors help patients kill themselves wouldn’t even make the list.”

If the governor decides to ignore the clear teachings of her own church on this issue, she might consider her political interests.

Her No. 1 re-election nemesis, Rep. Elise Stefanik, already charges that Hochul’s mere silence on the question is “gutless” and “a betrayal of every New Yorker clinging to hope, a dagger in the backs of the vulnerable she swore to protect.”

The bill awaiting Hochul’s signature, has no waiting period, making same-day suicides entirely possible; it requires no evaluation of a would-be suicides patient’s mental competency.

Damningly, it requires doctors to lie on death certificates by listing the underlying illness as the cause of death, not the ingestion of lethal drugs: Why do that, except to conceal how many people wind up dead because of this law?

Medical Aid In Dying belies every value of the traditional Democratic Party, which has always cared about the most vulnerable.

Hochul needs to steel her spine and kill this monstrous measure the instant it’s finally delivered to her desk.