New York Governor Kathy Hochul on Friday signed a bill into law allowing medical aid in dying to be available for terminally ill New Yorkers with less than six months to live.

The law has parameters to ensure that patients are not coerced into choosing medical aid in dying and that no healthcare professional or religiously affiliated health facility would be forced to offer the aid, the governor said.

Under the law, there will be a mandatory waiting period of five days between when a prescription is written and filled. 

Mental health evaluations for patients seeking the aid will also be mandatory.

It will only be available to New York residents.

"Our state will always stand firm in safeguarding New Yorkers' freedoms and right to bodily autonomy, which includes the right for the terminally ill to peacefully and comfortably end their lives with dignity and compassion," Hochul said in a statement.

In 2017, the state's Court of Appeals rejected a lawsuit claiming that mentally competent, terminally ill patients have a right to have their doctors prescribe lethal drugs, ruling that doctor-assisted suicide is illegal in New York.

New York joins 12 U.S. states and the District of Columbia that allow assisted suicide. Oregon was the first state to legalize medical aid in dying in 1994.

Friday's move was welcomed by groups that work to ensure access to assisted suicide, including End of Life Choices New York, whose executive director, Mandi Zucker, called it a "mile marker in the long and winding road towards fairness, choice, peace, and dignity for all of those watching loved ones struggle with a terminal illness."

Zucker said the group will carry out a widespread education campaign over the next six months.

Reporting by Jasper Ward in Washington; Editing by Sam Holmes