POLITICS: Hochul’s bend on assisted suicide opens a grim door for New York

Gov. Kathy Hochul has yet again done the wrong thing with just a bit of butt-covering, this time in embracing doctor-administered euthanasia in the Empire State with a few bogus added “safeguards.”

The gov declared Wednesday that she’ll sign into law the “Medical Aid in Dying” bill that gives state sanction to doctors providing killing “medicine” to terminally ill patients — her only conditions being to require the recipient to submit written and recorded oral requests, plus a five-day waiting period and signoffs from a physician that he or she has at most six months to live and a psychiatric professional on the would-be suicide’s mental fitness.

It’s a Kat classic: Splitting the difference to make sure nobody gets mad at her, rather than take a principled stand against a horrible idea that, yes, sounds reasonable to most people who don’t look closely into it.

Sorry: Any law that endorses death-by-doctor is despicable and dangerous.

MAID fans argue that allowing “a dignified exit” for someone close to death anyway and suffering acutely is compassionate: You get to choose the place, time and circumstances of your ending; who could ask for anything more?

Sounds so warm and fuzzy — but it is beyond ghoulish in practice.

Open the door to assisted suicide, and limits on who’s eligible immediately start to evaporate.

Canada passed its first assisted suicide law in 2016; by 2021, it had dropped the rule limiting it to those facing a “reasonably foreseeable natural death,” allowing those with chronic illnesses and severe disabilities could also “choose” death-by-doctor.

We say “choose” because that too gets slippery fast: Multiple chilling accounts suggest Canadian doctors are nudging patients, especially the poor or disabled, into the final countdown.

In a nation with socialized medicine, it saves the government so much money . . .

In 2022, the year right after that “reform,” MAID became Canada’s fifth-leading cause of death.

New York’s MAID law, by the way, won’t even mandate solid record-keeping, so voters won’t learn how quickly we catch up with our neighbor to the north.

Then again, Canada’s already racing ahead: In 2027, prescriptions for death will expand again to include mental illnesses, so even perfectly physically healthy young people will get to give up because of conditions like severe depression.

Instead of treating the mental or physical illnesses that make people suicidal, Canada is joining a handful of European countries in suggesting that maybe they’re better off dead.

The Netherlands and Belgium have already made death-by-euthanasia available to terminally ill children.

The MAID slope is extra slippery — and the destination is nightmarish.

Even before the inevitable expansion, the Hochul-approved version holds gaping flaws.

Doctors are often wrong in guessing how long someone has to live and in estimating chances of recovery; people can easily feel pressured into ending their lives early for fear of becoming a financial, emotional or practical burden on their families.

A civilized society tries to prevent suicide, not enable it.

Not out of indifference to suffering, but because life is valuable and worth fighting for.

MAID turns healers into death-dealers and treats ending your own life as “medicine.”

That’s reason enough for the Legislature to torpedo it rather than give Hochul cover for her macabre betrayal of her duty to serve the people of New York.