ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Wednesday that she will support a bill legalizing medically assisted suicide for terminally ill adults with less than six months to live, once it is amended.
Advocates who fought for passage of New York’s “Medical Aid in Dying Act” say it’s a compassionate way for terminally ill people to end their lives. One Rochester-area man’s fight began when he saw the horror that his partner went through while she battled cancer.
Cathy Quinn and Scott Barraco spent just one Christmas together. When they met in early 2013, Quinn was recuperating from tongue cancer.
“Cathy was just this tremendous woman,” said Barraco. “She was healthy. She was doing well.”
Barraco describes Quinn as an extraordinary planner of vacations and other tasks, and an exceptional cook. But a half year into their relationship, her cancer returned.
“Some days she’d wake up and her face was so swollen, she couldn’t see and her eyes were shut,” he said.
After three major surgeries and several rounds of chemo and radiation, doctors told Cathy the cancer had spread throughout her body. They gave her no more than six months to live.
“Her body was betraying her,” said Barraco. “She felt it. She could feel herself dying. It became increasingly difficult to manage the pain.”
Unable to eat or speak, and on a feeding tube — she made a decision.
“Cathy, regardless of whether there was a law or not, decided she wanted to die peacefully in her own terms,” he said. “She was determined. She did not want to suffer and linger in pain and die on cancer’s terms.”
Barraco recalls excruciating details of how Quinn planned to end her life with an overdose of alcohol and medication. It didn’t work. That’s when doctors told them about an option, legal, at the time, in just four states. Medical aid in dying — which allows people given six months or fewer to live to request access to a cocktail of drugs which would end their life.
“It was like a gut punch to find out that the exact compassion she needed wasn’t available to her because of her ZIP code,” he said.
In the spring of 2014, the couple took a cruise.
“It really meant a lot to both of us,” said Scott, as he showed photos from their final vacation. Within a month, Cathy died. She was 44.
Before Cathy’s death, Scott began writing letters to New York politicians, turning his grief into advocacy, and pushing for New York to change its laws regarding assisted, compassionate end-of-life.
“After she passed, I thought, well, gee, if I just tell somebody about this, they’re going to fix it,” he said. “I had no idea it would take this long.”
After numerous trips to the state capital and more than a decade of fighting for the passage of Medical Aid in Dying, Gov. Kathy Hochul agreed Wednesday to sign a bill passed by both houses of the Legislature.
“If Cathy is aware of what this is, she’s doing a happy dance and clapping and cheering,” said Barraco. “And she’s proud.”
Opponents of the legislation wonder is assisted death is compassionate at all.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan and the Bishops of New York State issued the following statement on Hochul’s announcement that she will sign the physician-assisted suicide bill passed earlier this year by the legislature:
“We are extraordinarily troubled by Governor Hochul’s announcement that she will sign the egregious bill passed by the legislature earlier this year sanctioning physician-assisted suicide in New York State. This new law signals our government’s abandonment of its most vulnerable citizens, telling people who are sick or disabled that suicide in their case is not only acceptable, but is encouraged by our elected leaders.
Tragically, this new law will seriously undermine all of the anti-suicide and mental health care investments Governor Hochul has made through her tenure. How can any society have credibility to tell young people or people with depression that suicide is never the answer, while at the same time telling elderly and sick people that it is a compassionate choice to be celebrated?
“While physician-assisted suicide will soon be legal here in New York, we must clearly reiterate that it is in direct conflict with Catholic teaching on the sacredness and dignity of all human life from conception until natural death and is a grave moral evil on par with other direct attacks on human life. We call on Catholics and all New Yorkers to reject physician-assisted suicide for themselves, their loved ones, and those in their care. And we pray that our state turn away from its promotion of a Culture of Death and invest instead in life-affirming, compassionate hospice and palliative care, which is seriously underutilized.”
Conservative groups also speaking out.
New York State Conservative Party Chairman Gerard Kassar releasing a statement that read in part:
“By endorsing legislation that opens the door to assisted suicide, the Governor is leading New York down a slippery slope that threatens our most vulnerable citizens—those who may be pressured or left feeling that their lives are burdensome.”
Barraco says he respects the opinions of those who oppose the legislation on moral or ethical grounds.
“But it would change the world for the rest of the brief life you have left, if you were interested in it,” he said. “And that’s what nails it for me.”
After watching the love of his life fight for her life while suffering in unbearable pain, Barraco has found closure.
“People in New York are going to have this compassionate option that Cathy didn’t have,” he said.