About the Alliance

Who We Are

Legal and Legislative Context

The New York Alliance Against Assisted Suicide brings together a broad coalition of concerned citizens, healthcare providers, and disability rights advocates who share a common commitment to protecting vulnerable New Yorkers. The Alliance believes that legalizing physician-assisted suicide would fundamentally change the practice of medicine and the relationship between doctors and patients. Rather than offering assisted suicide as an option, the organization works to ensure that every New Yorker has access to compassionate, high-quality end-of-life care that respects the dignity and value of every human life, regardless of age, health status, or disability.

A core message of the Alliance is that the best response to suffering is not assisted suicide but better care. The organization actively promotes increased access to hospice and palliative care services throughout New York State. These forms of specialized medical care focus on relieving pain, managing symptoms, and providing emotional and spiritual support for patients facing serious illness. The Alliance argues that when such comprehensive care is truly available and accessible, the demand for assisted suicide diminishes significantly, and families can focus on meaningful time together rather than hastening death.

The Alliance engages in public education efforts to inform New Yorkers about the real-world consequences of assisted suicide laws as they have played out in other states. Through community presentations, educational materials, and public forums, the organization highlights documented concerns about inadequate safeguards, the risk of coercion against elderly and disabled individuals, and the troubling expansion of eligibility criteria that has occurred in jurisdictions where assisted suicide was initially legalized with promises of strict limits and protections.

Healthcare professionals play a vital role within the Alliance's work. Many physicians, nurses, and hospice workers have joined the coalition out of concern that assisted suicide conflicts with the fundamental ethical principles of the medical profession. These healthcare voices emphasize that medicine's proper role is to heal, comfort, and care for patients, not to deliberately end their lives. The Alliance supports medical professionals who wish to practice according to their conscience and advocates for policies that protect the integrity of the patient-doctor relationship.

The Alliance also works closely with disability rights organizations to highlight how assisted suicide laws disproportionately threaten people with disabilities. Legalizing assisted suicide, the organization argues, sends a harmful message that some lives are not worth living and places undue pressure on those who already face discrimination and devaluation in healthcare settings. By strengthening protections for vulnerable populations and expanding access to supportive services, the Alliance seeks to build a society that truly cares for all its members, especially those facing the greatest challenges at the end of life.