MANHATTAN (CN) — Two of terminally ill plaintiffs who sued to decriminalize physician-assisted suicide in New York lost painful battles with Lou Gehrig’s disease and AIDS last year.
On Thursday, the lawsuit they pursued up until the end died too.
New York’s Court of Appeals unanimously dismissed the case led by the late Sara Myers, who did not survive her neurodegenerative condition long enough to watch her attorney argue that the state’s criminal laws rob people like her of the dignity to end life on their own terms.
“She died alone in an institution alone and in a stupor,” Debevoise & Plimpton attorney Edwin Schallert had told a six-judge panel in May. “That is what she was trying to avoid.”
Schallert’s impassioned plea did not persuade the five judges who issued today’s ruling.
“Our legislature has a rational basis for criminalizing assisted suicide, and plaintiffs have no constitutional right to the relief they seek herein,” the unsigned opinion states.
The court found that any relaxation of New York’s centuries-old prohibitions would have to come from Albany.
“The Legislature may conclude that those dangers can be effectively regulated and specify the conditions under which it will permit aid-in-dying,” the 14-page opinion states. “Indeed, the jurisdictions that have permitted the practice have done so only through considered legislative action … and those courts to have considered this issue with respect to their own state constitutions have rejected similar constitutional arguments.”
In the United States, five states and the nation’s capital have legalized some form of what advocates call “aid in dying”: Oregon, Washington, Vermont, California, Colorado and the District of Columbia.
Though she joined the full court in ruling against legalization, Judge Jenny Rivera penned a concurring opinion Thursday sympathizing with those who seek a doctor’s help.
“The dying process, candidly recounted, illustrates the struggle of the terminally ill to live and die on their own terms, and is a vivid reminder of the fragility of human existence,” the 28-page concurrence states. “It also provides necessary context for the legal analysis.”
Myers testified to feeling trapped in a “torture chamber of her own deteriorating body,” while her co-plaintiff Steve Goldenberg had been bedridden 19 hours a day on a regimen of 24 AIDS medications and morphine, according to their lawsuit.
Eric Seiff, a former Manhattan prosecutor and the third co-plaintiff, was battling bladder cancer when they sued. Though his cancer is now in remission, Seiff still wants aid in dying as an option, should his health take another turn for the worse.