Dovie Eisner writes from New York against the state’s push for legal assisted suicide in a most powerfully personal way:

Last September, I found myself — confused, groggy, and irritable — staring into the surgical dome light of my local hospital’s emergency room. The doctor and my parents at my bedside informed me that I had been found by a passing police officer, not breathing, and with no pulse, after my ventilator hose had become disconnected and severe hypoxia kicked in. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation brought me back, and I’d been transported to the ER. I was alive — thanks to the determination of law enforcers and local medical personnel to keep me that way.

New York’s proposed Medical Aid in Dying Act threatens to undo this presumption in favour of lifesaving, especially for people with disabilities such as me. This month, the bill passed in a vote of 81 to 67 in the Assembly, the lower chamber of the state legislature. It is now on its way to a vote in the state Senate.

If the Empire State joins the 10 states (and the nation’s capital) that have made assisted suicide legal, it will be adding killing to the options available in doctors’ toolkits. Given my own brushes with death over my 34 years — and those moments of staring into the suicidal abyss as a result of depression associated with my condition — I pray Empire State lawmakers take a step back, and rethink. . . .

A life not worthy of living. Well, I’ve heard that before. From peers, from rivals, sometimes from myself. I haven’t been suicidal in a good number of years, but I can’t say that about my teens and early 20s. I’ve had my fair share of heartbreak and physical pain that might have crushed many. Yes, no one wants to end up like Tithonus, locked away to wilt and fade while still breathing. But neither should the state of New York give reason for loved ones to abandon the frail. I’m one of the lucky ones. I fear for a world in which life is cheap.

Read it all on UnHerd here.