The law allowing assisted suicide takes effect today in the Empire State.
Assisted suicide is law here — officially beginning to be implemented today, August 5 — in New York State. You’ve likely heard by now about Catholics sisters fighting for religious freedom in the midst of this — who currently have a temporary reprieve thanks to the lawyers at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. And perhaps you also know about the groups of disabled men and women who are also fighting the law.
Heavy on my mind today is Dovie Eisner.
He wrote a piece for UnHerd in mid-May 2025: “New York’s euthanasia bill targets me: Suicide-by-doctor cheapens disabled lives.” It was picked up by the New York Post less than a week later and, at the same time as it was appearing in print that weekend, his oxygen became detached for a few seconds too long. He has been hospitalized (with at least one brief stint in intensive rehab) and — as far as I’m aware — mostly unresponsive since. The article was also reprinted in the Free Press immediately after the incident.
Dovie comes from a faithful Hasidic Jewish family. He converted to Catholicism (he wrote a bit about here) in recent years — a decision that he did not take lightly. Even before this last hospitalization, he was dependent on his devoted parents for most of his care, although he remained as independent as one could be in his circumstances. Whenever I’ve visited, I’ve seen his father praying psalms over him.
Dovie has befriended many a public intellectual over the years — Robbie George in particular — and has a solid group of friends. Despite the added effort it would take him, he’d frequent some of the Catholic and conservative events in the city. He was scheduled to be at the Becket Fund’s dinner in New York honoring Cardinal Dolan in May 2025. It’s from one of his good friends that I happen to know that he went to confession at a Dominican parish in Manhattan the night before the incident that changed so much in his life. That seems the obvious explanation for the peace I’ve seen on his face. (Though it’s been too long since I’ve made a visit.)
As I think about him today, I can’t help but think also about the mysteries of God’s ways and redemptive suffering. Dovie’s suffering has already saved lives from this cruel law he spoke out against. This is a little of what he wrote about the law, which takes effect today:
I was born with a recessive genetic neuromuscular condition called nemaline myopathy. Over the years, it’s developed to the relatively stable point where I use a portable ventilator to breathe — hence, my blacking out last September — and a motorized wheelchair to get around. I often require assistance with basic tasks. I’m not terminal — at least, not without taking into account that life itself is terminal, for all of us. But many times, my own body can feel like a straitjacket, and that’s without the physical pain that surges from time to time.
I don’t want to die, and God willing, I’ve got another couple of decades left, at the very least. Under the law as proposed, I wouldn’t be eligible, all things being equal. But all things aren’t always equal. Eighteen years ago, bedridden for a month after major back surgery, I wished more morphine than was necessary for pain relief had been available to me. Watching my late grandfather wasting away in his last six years in a hospital bed at around the same time, I could and still can empathize with those who favor medical aid in dying.
For others, such existential moments can tip into a yearning not to exist — to escape it all.
Which is, of course, the point. If no one wanted physician-assisted suicide, there’d be no reason to make or keep it illegal. But there is such demand. Yet New York would go down a very dark moral path by enabling doctors to accede to such requests, even — as of now — in the extremely limited circumstances of terminally ill patients with six months or fewer to live.
Well, here we are. I don’t know what the future holds for Dovie. I am not alone in continuing to pray for his complete recovery. And his family is an amazing witness to true love — and to the precious gift of human life, in all forms, with all its imperfections and challenges.
I assume Dovie remains protected from the new law he feared, because he has advocates in his family. And most, if not all, of his care has been in Jewish institutions. The hospital may now be required to offer information about medically induced death, but his family is still free to reject it.
Please pray for Dovie and his family. And for everyone henceforth vulnerable in the Empire State.
For more detail about some of the sisters who are fighting New York for religious freedom — and their patients:
For more on some of the efforts against the law from the disability community:
