Panel of judges in Manhattan Appellate Division in New York rejected to allow doctor-assisted suicide in New York State. The judges admitted to be sympathetic with the situation of the plaintiffs, but they found no consitutional right to assisted suicide.
Four women judges in the panel upheld a ruling by Manhattan State Supreme Court Justice Joan Kenney as New York Daily News reported. in previous ruling, Judge Kenney said she was sympathetic to the plight of the dying plaintiffs but state laws that outlaw assisted suicides are not a violation of their civil rights.
In the filing, the plaintiffs are desperate terminally ill patients and doctors who fear of losing their licenses or being criminally prosecuted, if the helped dying patients to end their life faster.
In the judge opinion which was written by Judge Angela Mazzarell said the plaintiffs failed to meet the heavy burden which was stated in the lawsuit. The plaintiffs said they had a heavy burden of proof that New York laws that give people right to refuse medical treatment also give them right to ask doctor helping them to die.
". . . . We find that, even giving plaintiffs the benefit of every reasonable inference, they have not presented sufficient allegations to suggest that the Penal Law has an implicit carve-out for aid-in-dying, or that, notwithstanding the precedents on the matter, the constitutionality of aid-in-dying is ripe for judicial reconsideration," the court ruling stated as excerpted by Life News.
The judges said in their 36-page decision, the plaintiffs relied on two papers that translated the Death with Dignity Act in Oregon has not invited the fears articulated by people opposed to aid-in-dying. While for the state, interests to preserve human life is a symbolic and aspirational as well as practical ones.
In New York, similar act with the one in Oregon, End-of-Life Options Act is being introduced. The act is sponsored by Sen. Diane Savino which would allow terminally ill adult patients in New York access to aid-in-dying medication. WIVB News reported that The End-of-Life Options Act IS NOT physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia. The only patients that could quality for the aid-in-dying medication are adults with a proven terminal illness.
If the bill is passed, no doctor or hospital will be mandated to provide aid-in-dying medication to a terminally patient. Senator Sarvino in an interview said she was hopeful the bill will move through a committee this session, and be enacted within the next two years.
Panel of judges in New York Appellate Division in Manhattan have found no consitutional right to assisted suicide. Therefore, judges rejected to allow doctor-assisted suicide lawsuit in New York State which filed by plaintiffs.
