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NEW YORK, NY, May 10, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Physician-assisted suicide is not a fundamental right in New York, an appeals court has ruled.

A four-woman panel of judges in the Appellate Division’s First Department last week upheld Manhattan State Supreme Court Justice Joan Kenney’s October 2015 finding that state laws forbidding assisted suicide are not a violation of civil rights.

The case seeks legal protection for doctors who provide euthanasia drugs to mentally competent terminally ill adults. Such individuals have had the right in New York to refuse medical treatment, but it is against the law for physicians to assist them in ending their lives.  

Kenney had said she was sympathetic to the plight of the case’s plaintiffs, consisting of a number of terminally ill New Yorkers, along with a handful of individual physicians and two euthanasia advocacy groups, but that assisted suicide was against the law. One of the petitioners has since passed away.

“In New York, as in most states, it is a crime to aid another to commit or attempt suicide,” Kenney wrote. “But patients may refuse lifesaving medical treatment.”

The plaintiffs contended that authorities are wrong to equate “aid in dying” with assisted suicide, claiming the former is “starkly distinct from” assisted suicide, and alleging that “evolving medical standards and public views support aid-in-dying.”

Citing last year’s Obergefell v Hodges decision legalizing homosexual “marriage” in the U.S., the plaintiffs also said the possibility existed for established law to clash with terminally ill patients’ freedom, contending that “evolving social views are entitled to consideration in identifying rights that historically were rejected by the courts.”

The court rejected this argument, saying that a consensus had not been reached on physician-assisted suicide and that the debate should continue.

The judges also ruled the plaintiffs did not meet the burden of persuasion in arguing that the same principles should apply to the act of suicide as do to a patient’s right to refuse medical treatment.

“Considering the complexity of the concerns presented here,” the panel concluded, “we defer to the political branches of government on the question of whether aid-in-dying should be considered a prosecutable offense.”

The plaintiffs' attorney Edwin Schallert said his clients are “very disappointed” that both courts had ruled on the law without the opportunity for them to submit evidence in support of their claims. Schallert also said they plan to appeal.

State lawmakers this week introduced the Medical Aid in Dying Act allowing for physician-assisted suicide in New York.