An Update on Medical Aid-in-Dying Laws

The article discusses the distinctions between euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, and medical aid in dying (MAID). It highlights where MAID laws have passed, reflecting growing public support. I also urge advance planning for end-of-life care, whether one would consider MAID or not.

You have probably heard the terms “assisted suicide,” “medical aid in dying,” “death with dignity,” and “euthanasia,” which are often used interchangeably, but they are distinct concepts, according to Dr. Jonathon Treem, of the University of Colorado Palliative Care.

Euthanasia refers to a provider administering a lethal medication to end a patient’s suffering and life, while physician-assisted suicide is when a patient takes a prescribed lethal dose of medication to end their own suffering.

Medical aid in dying is when a terminally ill patient takes a prescribed medication to achieve death in line with their own values, regardless of their degree of suffering. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10184842/)

The article I am sharing here reviews the current legal status of medical aid in dying (MAID) in the United States. You may not be aware of how accessible it is in this country. I’m sharing it to inform you, not advocating for or against it.

These concepts are not synonymous with patients or family choosing a do-not-resuscitate (DNR) status or choosing to forgo any type of life-sustaining treatments. Those situations are not covered by these laws and I’m not addressing them here.

By September, Nearly a Third of Americans Will Live in States With Legal Aid in Dying (2026)

By Paula Span,

Jules Netherland traveled from her home in the Bronx to the New York State Capitol in Albany several times in the past few years, hoping to persuade the legislature to pass a medical aid-in-dying bill, allowing terminally ill patients to end their lives with a lethal prescription.

She spoke at rallies. With other members of the advocacy organization Compassion & Choices, she visited legislators’ offices. In 2024, as the state Assembly was debating the aid-in-dying bill, she helped unfurl a banner in the chamber gallery that read, “Stop the Suffering.”

Her activism was becoming difficult. Netherland, who is 59 and works for a nonprofit, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2019. “I did a full year of aggressive treatment,” she said. “Chemotherapy. A mastectomy. Radiation treatment every weekday for five weeks. Six months of two oral medications.”

She recovered and felt well until the cancer returned a few years later. Although metastatic breast cancer is incurable, drugs are keeping her disease at bay for now. Netherland feels fortunate but also fatigued, and she contends with brain fog, gastrointestinal symptoms, and joint pain.

“My energy is really limited,” she said.

As she emailed and called legislators, Netherland feared she might die before the aid-in-dying bill — first introduced in New York in 2016 — could become law.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

‘A Breakthrough Moment’

On June 9, 2025, after the Assembly approved the bill, Netherland was in the state Senate chamber, watching the aye votes mount, and seeing it pass. Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an amended version in February; it is scheduled to take effect Aug. 5.

A similar law is slated to take effect in September in Illinois, which would become the 13th state (plus the District of Columbia) where medical aid in dying is legal. (California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, Washington, D.C., and permitted in Montana by court ruling.)

“A breakthrough moment,” said Kevin Díaz, president of Compassion & Choices, which has spearheaded the long campaign for such laws. After almost 30 years — Oregon’s law, the first in the country, was enacted in 1997 — the addition of two populous states means that almost a third of Americans will live in one where medical aid-in-dying is legally available. “It shows that there’s broad support for this model,” Díaz said.

Polls consistently back that claim. A Pew Research Center survey last spring found that almost two-thirds of respondents didn’t consider the practice “morally wrong,” either because they thought it was acceptable or not a moral issue.

Support crossed many political and religious lines: A narrow majority of Republicans and 76% of Democrats both found “physician-assisted death” (also sometimes called “physician-assisted suicide”) permissible; so did most Catholics, Jews, and nonevangelical white Protestants.

In New York, a Siena poll found that 54% of respondents supported aid in dying, including majorities of men and women, of all age groups, and of city, suburban, and upstate residents. A plurality of Latinos supported it; Black respondents narrowly opposed it.

Passing these laws has grown somewhat easier, said Thaddeus Pope, a bioethicist and professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, who tracks such policies. “You can say, ‘We have 10 years in California, 18 years in Washington, and 29 years in Oregon, and nothing bad has happened.’ It becomes more accepted.”

‘You Need A, B, and C’

Yet legalizing medical aid in dying, or MAID, has been and remains a long, contentious process. Catholic leadership and many disability organizations staunchly oppose it. (Pope Leo XIV personally asked Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker not to sign the bill.)

The American Medical Association says that “physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer” and poses “serious societal risks.” However, a number of state medical organizations have opted to remain neutral or, as in New York, to support passage.

The Patients’ Rights Action Fund, through a sister organization, has lawsuits pending or on appeal in California, Delaware, and Colorado, arguing that aid in dying laws discriminate against people with disabilities by steering them toward physician-assisted suicide instead of treatment.

“This is a litigation strategy we’ve developed to ultimately get to the Supreme Court,” said Matt Vallière, the group’s executive director, who declined to say whether it would sue to block the Illinois and New York laws.

Even when aid-in-dying laws succeed, using them can prove challenging. In every state (except Montana, where it became legal through a court decision, so there is no statute governing eligibility), aid-in- dying is available only to people with incurable illnesses who are expected to die within six months.

It typically involves oral and written requests to two doctors, with mandated waiting periods between requests. Patients must have the mental capacity to make the decision, which disqualifies those with dementia, and they must ingest the medication without assistance. (An amendment Hochul insisted on adds a psychologist or psychiatrist to the process.)

All but two states require patients to be residents. Oregon and Vermont scrapped their residency requirements to settle lawsuits brought by Compassion & Choices. (Courts ruled against a similar suit in New Jersey.)

Moreover, any doctor, hospital, or healthcare system can legally decline to provide aid-in-dying, and religiously affiliated institutions often opt out. Those who participate can add their own requirements.

“The state can say ‘You need A, B, and C,’ and Columbia-Presbyterian can say, ‘We also want D, E, and F,’” said Pope, the Minnesota bioethicist.

Hotly Debated, Seldom Used

Perhaps these restrictions, or a lack of public awareness, help explain why, despite the headlines and fervent debates, the number of people who actually use the law is tiny in every state — usually 1% or fewer of the deaths recorded annually. The support for giving patients this kind of autonomy at the end of life remains widespread, but the desire to personally exercise it apparently is not.

Still, after studies showed that many patients seeking MAID were dying before they could complete the process, the trend has been to loosen restrictions. California cut its 15-day waiting period to 48 hours; New Mexico allows physician assistants and advanced-practice nurses to write prescriptions along with doctors.

“Most states have now amended their laws two or three times,” Pope said. “We have liberalized.” Telehealth can also facilitate access to participating doctors.

Compassion & Choices is planning legal challenges to end residency requirements in additional states, Díaz said. It is also considering how to “make inroads in jurisdictions with a much different cultural and political environment,” he added, mentioning Florida and other Southern states.

Medical aid in dying represents a shift in power, Díaz said. “The person who has to bear the burden of the suffering should have the ability to decide when it’s enough,” he added.

Anne Gurnett Bander, 72, a retired research scientist in Carmel, New York, cared for her husband for four years as ALS — the relentlessly disabling neurological disorder also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease — rendered him bedridden and dependent on feeding and breathing tubes. “By the time he died, the only thing he could do was nod his head,” she recalled.

So being diagnosed with ALS herself last year was “my worst possible nightmare,” Gurnett Bander said. She was planning to fly to Switzerland, where the nonprofit organization Dignitas provides medical aid in dying, when she learned about the New York bill and began speaking publicly in support of it, her voice faltering as her illness advanced.

Gurnett Bander and Netherland say they’re not certain they’ll use lethal drugs to end their lives as their symptoms intensify. Not infrequently, patients complete the necessary steps, secure the prescribed medication, decide they don’t need it after all, and die of their diseases. But both women insist that the choice should be theirs.

“It can offer so much peace of mind,” Netherland said. “I thought, ‘People should have this option.’ Now, they will.”

The New Old Age is produced through a partnership with The New York Times.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Medical assistance in dying in Canada

Medical assistance in dying (MAID) is a process that allows someone who is found eligible to be able to receive assistance from a medical practitioner in ending their life. The federal Criminal Code of Canada permits this to take place only under very specific circumstances and rules.

Anyone requesting this service must meet specific eligibility criteria to receive medical assistance in dying. Any medical practitioner who administers an assisted death to someone must satisfy certain safeguards first. Learn more at the link.

Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide in the United Kingdom

According to the NHS, both euthanasia and assisted suicide are illegal under English law. The UK Parliament is considering a Terminally Ill Adults Bill that would “allow adults who are terminally ill, subject to safeguards and protections, to request and be provided with assistance to end their own life; and for connected purposes.”(as of May 14, 2026)

Christian Medical and Dental Association

Position Statement Abstract on Medically Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia

“Medically-assisted suicide and euthanasia (MAS & E) are morally controversial practices because they intentionally cause death and thereby contradict the Judeo-Christian and Hippocratic traditions of medical ethics which call for curing and caring, not killing. Though medically-assisted suicide has been legalized in several jurisdictions in the United States, and euthanasia has been legalized in a limited number of other countries, public and professional debates persist about the ethics of MAS & E and the harmful consequences of their legalization.

Some people may want to have access to MAS & E because of the possibility of physical or mental decline, losing control of their lives, becoming a burden to others, or experiencing severe pain or other symptoms, or the fear thereof.

In response to such concerns about suffering, healthcare professionals should provide excellent palliative care which respects life and supports the whole person. They should not endorse self-destructive notions of autonomy and mistaken notions of dignity which devalue the lives of those who suffer.

Based on a biblical account of life, death, killing, suffering, freedom, and love, Christians hold that the goodness of every human life is not diminished by suffering or disability, and that dying patients need compassionate care, not interventions that disrespect life by ending it.”

Read the Full Policy Statement

Your Review and Response

Your state may not have a medical aid-in-dying law now, but the idea should prompt us all to think about what matters at the end of life. Whether you would ever consider MAID or not, reflect on a few questions that could make your end-of-life experience more aligned with your values and less stressful for you and your family.

How do my moral, spiritual, and cultural beliefs shape the way I think about suffering, dignity, and choice at the end of life?

If I faced a terminal illness, what kinds of treatments or interventions would feel supportive — and which would feel burdensome?

What matters most to me at the end of life — comfort, independence, connection, or something else — and how do I want my care to reflect that?

Have I documented my wishes with an advanced directive or similar document? Are my next of kin aware of my wishes and willing to abide by them?

Here is a reference on the various types of

Advance Directives

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Declaring Independence-July 4, 2026

Read the text of the Declaration of Independence July 4, 1776. Would you have supported the fight for independence?

In Congress, July 4, 1776

“The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

Declaration of Independence: A Transcription

“The previous text is a transcription of the Stone Engraving of the parchment Declaration of Independence (the document on display in the Rotunda at the National Archives Museum). The spelling and punctuation reflect the original.“

You can learn about the Declaration, its authors and signers, and see high-resolution images of the original at the above link. Read it here in Spanish.

La Declaración de Independencia

Remember and Research

Signing the Declaration and supporting the Revolution were costly for those who chose independence. Most paid with their property, money, family, and some paid with their lives.

Do you have ancestors who were part of the Revolution and know what happened to them? If you don’t know, consider researching your history. FamilySearch and the DAR Genealogical Research System are free and available to anyone wanting to find their Patriot ancestors.

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I’d love for you to follow this blog and follow me on social media.

I share information and inspiration to help you transform challenges into opportunities for learning and growth.

Add your name to the subscribe box to be notified of new posts by email. Click the link to read the post and browse other content. It’s that simple. No spam.

I enjoy seeing who is new to Watercress Words. When you subscribe, I will visit your blog or website. Thanks and see you next time.

Dr. Aletha

I joined the DAR when I found my Patriot ancestor.