Legalize assisted suicide: 9/11 hero

ALBANY — A 9/11 hero’s dying wish is that others don’t suffer the same agonizing death he did.

Jay Kallio — a trained paramedic who volunteered at Ground Zero — spent the weeks before his death making videos urging state legislators to legalize physician-assisted suicide.

Saying he was terrified of dying in excruciating pain, Kallio in one video pleaded, “I would ask you, look into your heart and try to see we who need your mercy now to save us from a horrifying death. Thank you.”

Kallio — who had battled cancer for years — said even if the measure didn’t pass during his lifetime, it is important that others don’t suffer the way he did at the end.

“I hope that this bill can get passed speedily,” Kallio said. “I don’t know if it could get passed in time for my death, but even if I had the peace of knowing that other patients wouldn’t have to go through this, that we could have made a difference in people’s minds, given patients the trust and the death with dignity that we could just say, ‘We’re ready. We’re ready.’ ”

Activists are hoping his words will still make a difference.

The videos are being used by Compassion & Choices-New York in hopes of persuading legislators to take up the Medical Aid in Dying Act — and make New York the seventh state to allow doctors to prescribe lethal medication to terminally ill adults who want to end their own lives.

Kallio, a transgender man who lived in Chelsea and was a social activist, died at the age of 61 in September. Those who were present at his death said he died suffering the extreme pain that he had hoped to avoid.

“The image of him in all that pain is very difficult to carry and I carry it. I am the witness to that,” said Bonnie Marcus, his partner. “He was an extraordinary human being. He was a warrior. He didn’t deserve to die that way and nobody does . . . nobody does.”

In the weeks leading up to his death, Compassion & Choices interviewed him a number of times, including from his hospital bed, about his illness and his desire to die on his own terms and in peace.

Kallio, advocates said, had been a volunteer with the auxiliary police in New York City for years before quitting to spend more as a hospice volunteer taking care of dying people.

On Sept. 11, 2001, after two planes flew into the World Trade Center buildings, he is said to have rode his bike to the site to volunteer his services. He spent several weeks helping and later rejoined the auxiliary police, advocates said.

Years later, Kallio developed breast cancer, and then lung cancer that spread throughout his body.

“It feels like getting stabbed with a knife and the knife is twisting,” Kallio said.

As a hospice volunteer for more than a decade, he praised doctors who administer palliative care but argued that there is only so much that can be done.

“I’m a strong advocate for palliative care and the quality of life it can bring to patients,” he said. “My quality of life is immeasurably better because of palliative care. But I also know that there are levels of pain they can’t control.

“I would like to have a legal right to end my life in a way that’s merciful for me, puts an early end to that suffering and doesn’t put my family through the horror of watching helplessly while I struggle and strain in pain and terror as I die.”

Corinne Carey, New York campaign director for Compassion & Choices, said Kallio contacted her organization about a year before he died to see what he could do to help the cause.

He wound up speaking with a group of doctors and even traveled to the state fair in Syracuse to discuss the issue.

When he went into the hospital a month before he died, Kallio agreed to allow Carey to interview him for a series of short videos. A six-minute compilation was put together after his death and will be made public on the group’s website this week.

The bill, sponsored by Assemblywoman Amy Paulin (D-Westchester County) and Sens. Brad Hoylman (DManhattan) and Diane Savino (D-S.I.) last year, moved out of the Assembly Health Committee, but did not make it to the chamber’s floor for a vote. The GOP-controlled Senate has not moved on the issue.

“A man who is a patient, who gave his life to help others, as his dying wish is calling for the Legislature to act — I can’t think of anything more powerful,” Hoylman said.

The issue is a complicated one and not expected to be acted on this year, supporters and opponents agree. The state’s medical community, religious groups like the Catholic Church, and organizations representing the aged and mentally disabled are opposed to legalizing physician-assisted suicide.

The critics say it devalues human life and could put the most vulnerable under pressure from family, doctors and insurance companies to take advantage of the death option.

“It’s obviously a very difficult issue and a very personal issue, but we continue to believe that the state should be investing more in palliative care and training doctors in better palliative care and funding for hospice programs,” said Dennis Poust, spokesman for the New York State Catholic Conference, which is headed by Timothy Cardinal Dolan.

“The idea that taking one’s own life equals so-called death with dignity is something we reject,” Poust added. “We believe a natural death is a dignified death.”

In a boost for supporters of physician-assisted suicide, the Medical Society of the State of New York, which has long opposed the practice, passed a resolution over the weekend to develop a survey to determine doctor attitudes regarding medical aid in dying.

Polls show strong support in New York for physician-assisted suicide. But Poust says “we believe a thoughtful legislator will look beyond that and understand the pitfalls as well and the impact it may have that hasn’t been totally considered to date.”

Six states currently permit physician-assisted suicide, including California, which began allowing it last year. New York is considered the next big battleground state.

“It’s an issue we’ll discuss with our members,” said Michael Whyland, spokesman for Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx).

Senate GOP spokesman Scott Reif said the Republican majority has not discussed the issue as a conference.