On February 6, 2026, New York governor Kathy Hochul signed her state’s Medical Aid in Dying Act into law. It was an “emotional decision,” the governor allowed. “Ultimately, though,” she concluded, “I’m proud that I gave people the choice when life gets really hard that they don’t have to prolong a death that’s inevitable.”

The Medical Aid in Dying Act, and Gov. Hochul’s stated reasons for signing it, deal in the language of choice. The will of the person who is choosing to die is held up as tantamount. There are procedures—“guardrails”—in place to make sure that one’s will is respected. Two physicians have to conclude that a person has less than six months to live. The man or woman who has chosen to die must request the death-dealing medication both orally and in writing, in the presence of witnesses. He or she must be declared mentally capable of making such a request.

The decision to die, like the governor’s decision to sign the right-to-die bill, may be “emotional,” but, above all, it must be made by the person alone, the one who will hasten “a death that’s inevitable.” The person who wants to die, it would seem, has the right to do so.

A Right to Die—But Is It Right?

Let us assume, for the sake of argument, what the law as it is written takes for granted, and what Gov. Hochul makes explicit, namely that people are free to choose whether to live or die. Let us assume that there can be a legal box within which there are no penalties for anyone who helps someone choose death, given that death is freely chosen. Let us even assume that the procedures provided for by the law are valid, and that—a bit of a stretch—the legislators who wrote and voted for the law were not unduly influenced by donations and lobbying by whatever groups or companies stand to benefit by the law’s passage and promulgation.

Let us say that there is, on some level, a right to die. The question still remains: is it right to die, intentionally, at the hand of another?

Gov. Hochul appears to be very confused on this question. A news report on the Medical Aid in Dying Act and Gov. Hochul’s signing of it reads, in part:

The legislation was first introduced in 2016 but stalled for years amid opposition from New York State Catholic Conference and other groups. The religious organization argued the measure would devalue human life and undermine the physician’s role as a healer.

Hochul is Roman Catholic, but said she had to think of other people.

“My own upbringing and my own religious values are a part of who I am,” Hochul said. . . . But she added, she doesn’t want to effect [sic] her personal decision-making on 20 million New Yorkers.

The New York State Catholic Conference is right to oppose the right-to-die law, precisely for the reasons given. Even if one does not think that they are right, the fact remains that the Conference gave clear reasons for its opposition. If Gov. Hochul disagrees with those reasons, she should say so, and why.

But she doesn’t. Ironically, she uses religion as a crutch, an excuse. She implies that valuing human life, which includes taking seriously the physician’s duty to heal, is a religious position, and not one based on reason and open to public inquiry. Some people may believe in the value of life and the physician’s duty to heal, she seems to be thinking, but as for herself, she adopts a falsely modest position in refraining from imposing these “religious” views on twenty million other people. In other words, Gov. Hochul cops out. The New York State Catholic Conference made an argument that deserves an answer. Gov. Hochul, it would seem, has none to give.

When Moral Argument Is Dismissed as “Religion”

This is very odd, especially considering that Gov. Hochul has no qualms about taking moral stands on other issues. In the very same news report as the one quoted above, the governor said she has “tried to be a champion for two recently deported gay men who came to Syracuse to escape persecution in Cuba.” The two men “worked at SUNY Upstate Medical University but were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement last fall when they went for a regular check-in.”

Reacting to their deportation, Gov. Hochul said, “I think it’s sickening happening to people working . . . here in Syracuse. These are people, these are not the criminals Donald Trump said he was going after. This insanity has to stop.”

The news report tells us, further, that Gov. Hochul “wants legislation stopping New York police departments from cooperating with ICE on immigration cases.”

These are strongly morally inflected statements. From them we can infer several things. Gov. Hochul seems to believe in human dignity, for one thing. She seems to think that homosexuality should not be cause for persecution. She seems to think that deporting people who are not criminals is not fair. She seems to think workers have rights, and even that work imparts dignity to the worker. When these moral principles are violated, Gov. Hochul feels disgust and outrage. She calls the transgressions of human dignity, as she sees it and them, “sickening,” a form of “insanity.”

There’s more. In the same news report we learn that, while speaking about the Medical Aid in Dying Act, immigration, deportation, and other issues, Gov. Hochul “introduced her choice to run for lieutenant governor, Adrienne Adams, the former speaker of the New York City Council. The two are in town for the New York State Democratic Committee Convention, which starts Friday.

When asked if the state is ready for an all-woman ticket, Hochul replied, ‘All female ticket? I think it rocks!’”

Once again, Gov. Hochul unapologetically takes a moral position of her own. Here, Gov. Hochul seems to believe that females are at least the equals of males in dignity, perhaps even more than equal, as having two females on a gubernatorial ticket would “rock,” in her view. One wonders if Gov. Hochul would express similar enthusiasm about an all-male ticket. If she wouldn’t, then it’s another indicator that she may understand the participation of females in politics to be an important moral advancement. If Gov. Hochul did not attach any moral significance to sex, then she would not care at all whether her running mate were a woman or a man. But she does care. Helping the cause of women clearly matters to Gov. Hochul.

It turns out that Gov. Hochul does have a very strong sense of right and wrong, and that she is untroubled about imposing these views on others, or at least making them publicly accessible in her role as an elected official. If she could stop ICE deportations, then I suspect she would. If she could encourage more women to enter the political arena, then I suspect she would do that, too. If she could protect the rights of workers, immigrants, and homosexuals, then I believe she would do whatever she could in that regard as well. Taking Gov. Hochul’s record in political office as a whole, it is clear that she is rarely shy about expressing her views and taking stands on what she considers to be morally important questions.

The Governor’s Moral Contradiction

So, why can’t Gov. Hochul take a moral position on suicide? Why can’t she take a moral position on helping people commit suicide, which would appear to be a form of premeditated murder?

Gov. Hochul has taken strong moral positions on abortion. She protected New York abortionists after Louisiana tried to stop them from dealing death in the Pelican State. She clearly believes that abortion is a social good, worth the outlay of political capital required to keep it going.

So, the Medical Aid in Dying Act, and the governor’s moral quietism on it, remain perplexing. If there is a right to die, then why can’t Gov. Hochul come out and say that it is right to die, even at a doctor’s hand? Why is she suddenly chary with the moral grandstanding when the issue is ushering people to their untimely deaths?

Perhaps one more bit of context will help. In a recent Economist article we learn that Hochul’s mother, Patricia Ann Courtney, died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Governor Hochul later said of this experience: “I am all too familiar with the pain of seeing someone you love suffer and feeling powerless to stop it.”

Now it makes sense. Gov. Hochul, it would seem, does not think it is right to die. She could not bring herself to say so about her mother. The issue, at bottom, is the way the governor feels. This is why the decision on the assisted suicide bill was “emotional” for her.

On the level of reason, it is wrong to help others die by suicide. On the level of emotions, of feelings, however, a deal with death can begin to look appealing, especially, as with the abortion issue, when the death will be someone else’s.

Not even Gov. Hochul seems to believe that it is right to die before our lives reach their natural end. It is merely, for her and many others, convenient.

The Human Life Review

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