OPINION:
It’s official. New York will become the 13th state in the nation to legalize euthanasia. Last month, Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul confirmed she will sign highly controversial legislation legalizing the practice.
With another stroke of her pen, the Empire State has again aligned itself with the growing, sad fraternity of governments that deny biblical truth and ignore the founding principles of the nation.
Ms. Hochul, who eviscerated religious liberty protections during the pandemic emergency and traded the cross around her neck for a gold necklace that said “Vaxxed,” now is explaining away her support for state-sanctioned killing. She hypocritically claims that “government has a responsibility to protect, not interfere, with an individual’s deeply personal decisions.” She said she hopes to help “speed death” for those suffering.
Regardless of her spin, it’s another example of left-wing politicians attempting to couch a fundamentally destructive policy in terms of their perverted views of choice and freedom. Ms. Hochul and proponents claim that video requests, waiting times and medical confirmation that someone has six months or less to live make this more humane.
Perhaps it’s not surprising that the governor who once told crowds that God wanted them to get the COVID-19 vaccine used the Christmas season of light and life to herald her support for legalized suicide. She now has taken her place as part of a small cadre of leftists who support state-sanctioned killing of human beings across the entire spectrum of life.
As the culture in many places drifts between secularism and militant atheism, liberalism and Marxism, we are especially vulnerable to the false promise of compassion reframed as dying with the assent of the state.
In Canada, like Europe, which is increasingly socialist and atheist, the numbers of suicides continue to mount since legalization. In 2024, nearly 16,500 people died by their own request, representing 5% of all deaths in Canada and a 6.9% increase over 2023.
In California, the most liberal state in the union, more than 1,000 people died by state-sanctioned suicide in 2024, up from 884 the previous year.
As with so much of the left’s agenda, euphemisms for this assault on human life abound. “Assisted suicide” implies that you’re not really killing yourself, but rather someone else is doing it for you. “Medical aid in dying” turns the barbarism into a medical procedure or an act backed up by science. It all smacks of other entries in their lexicon of social transformation, such as “gender affirming care” and “reproductive health care” before it.
Americans should expect that, like every other agenda item of the left to remake this country — be it welfare expansion, abortion, drug legalization, transgenderism, critical race theory, diversity, equity and inclusion, or others — Democrats will seek to aggressively expand legalized suicide.
A little more than a half century ago, abortion was against the law. We were then told it needed to be “safe, rare and legal.” Today, in places such as New York, the government celebrates killing human babies. Killing them is legal up to the moment of birth and is taxpayer-funded. More than 20 million babies have been denied their right to life in the greatest stain on the soul of a great nation since 1973.
It’s not hard to imagine that states such as New York will create even more permissive environments, further devaluing the sanctity of human life, now truly from cradle to grave.
The line between life and death is thin, as is the one between good and evil. What started with abortion and transgenderism is snowballing into a full-blown culture of death driven by the same people who think more dependency on the state is an achievement.
Americans and forces for human dignity, such as the Catholic Church, must meet this moment with more than just a smattering of social media messages. They must meet this moment with more than some thin expression of disappointment.
In our time of artificial intelligence, threats to human flourishing, a global Islamist intifada, rampant antisemitism and emboldened Marxism, we must project out how this manufactured right to die can and will be perverted into something even more insidious.
Liberal women such as Ms. Hochul won’t stop it. Boomer and Gen X radical feminists have failed to protect even their own gender from abuse.
Young Americans are our hope, particularly young men. They can make their voices heard that this culture of death must be defeated. They can give us hope that some cadre of the next generation truly understands the old maxim that a government that can give you everything can also take it all from you.
As we begin 2026, all Americans facing this left-wing assault and our AI-fueled future must acknowledge that giving government an inch means it will take a mile. Unchecked, no one will be safe. An America that truly prospers will be one that chooses to protect life.
• Tom Basile is the host of “America Right Now” on Newsmax TV.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.