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.<\/p>\n
She spoke at rallies. With other members of the advocacy organization Compassion & Choices, she visited legislators\u2019 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, \u201cStop the Suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her activism was becoming difficult. Netherland, who is 59 and works for a nonprofit, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2019. \u201cI did a full year of aggressive treatment,\u201d she said. \u201cChemotherapy. A mastectomy. Radiation treatment every weekday for five weeks. Six months of two oral medications.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy energy is really limited,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
As she emailed and called legislators, Netherland feared she might die before the aid in dying bill \u2014 first introduced in New York in 2016 \u2014 could become law.<\/p>\n
\u2018A Breakthrough Moment\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n 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.\u00a0Gov. Kathy Hochul signed<\/a>\u00a0an amended version in February; it is scheduled to take effect Aug. 5.<\/p>\n A similar law is\u00a0slated to take effect<\/a> in September in Illinois, which would become\u00a0the 13th state<\/a> (plus the District of Columbia)\u00a0where medical aid in dying is legal.<\/p>\n \u201cA breakthrough moment,\u201d said Kevin D\u00edaz, president of Compassion & Choices, which has spearheaded the long campaign for such laws. After almost 30 years \u2014 Oregon\u2019s law, the first in the country, was enacted in 1997 \u2014 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. \u201cIt shows that there\u2019s broad support for this model,\u201d D\u00edaz said.<\/p>\n Polls consistently back that claim. A\u00a0Pew Research Center survey<\/a>\u00a0last spring found that almost two-thirds of respondents didn\u2019t consider the practice \u201cmorally wrong,\u201d 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 \u201cphysician-assisted death\u201d (also sometimes called \u201cphysician-assisted suicide\u201d) permissible; so did most Catholics, Jews, and nonevangelical white Protestants.<\/p>\n In New York,\u00a0a Siena poll found<\/a>\u00a0that 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.<\/p>\n 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. \u201cYou can say, \u2018We have 10 years in California, 18 years in Washington, and 29 years in Oregon, and nothing bad has happened.\u2019 It becomes more accepted.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018You Need A, B, and C\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n 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\u00a0asked Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker<\/a> not to sign\u00a0the bill.)<\/p>\n The American Medical Association says that \u201cphysician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician\u2019s role as healer\u201d and poses \u201cserious societal risks,\u201d although a number of state medical organizations have opted to remain neutral or, as in New York, to\u00a0support passage<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Patients\u2019 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a litigation strategy we\u2019ve developed to ultimately get to the Supreme Court,\u201d said Matt Valli\u00e8re, the group\u2019s executive director, who declined to say whether it would sue to block the Illinois and New York laws.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.)<\/p>\n All but two states require patients to be residents. Oregon and Vermont scrapped their residency requirements\u00a0to settle lawsuits<\/a>\u00a0brought by Compassion & Choices. (Courts ruled against<\/a>\u00a0a\u00a0similar suit in New Jersey<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Moreover, any doctor, hospital, or healthcare system can legally decline to provide aid in dying, and religiously affiliated institutions often opt out. Those that participate can add their own requirements.<\/p>\n \u201cThe state can say \u2018You need A, B, and C,\u2019 and Columbia-Presbyterian can say, \u2018We also want D, E, and F,\u2019\u201d said Pope, the Minnesota bioethicist.<\/p>\n Hotly Debated, Seldom Used<\/strong><\/p>\n 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 \u2014 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.<\/p>\n Still, after studies showed that many patients seeking MAID were\u00a0dying before they could complete the process<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n \u201cMost states have now amended their laws two or three times,\u201d Pope said. \u201cWe have liberalized.\u201d Telehealth can also facilitate access to participating doctors.<\/p>\n Compassion & Choices is planning legal challenges to end residency requirements in additional states, D\u00edaz said. It is also considering how to \u201cmake inroads in jurisdictions with a much different cultural and political environment,\u201d he added, mentioning Florida and other Southern states.<\/p>\n Medical aid in dying represents a shift in power, D\u00edaz said. \u201cThe person who has to bear the burden of the suffering should have the ability to decide when it\u2019s enough,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Anne Gurnett Bander, 72, a retired research scientist in Carmel, New York, cared for her husband for four years as ALS \u2014 the relentlessly disabling neurological disorder also known as Lou Gehrig\u2019s disease \u2014 rendered him bedridden and dependent on feeding and breathing tubes. \u201cBy the time he died, the only thing he could do was nod his head,\u201d she recalled.<\/p>\n So being diagnosed with ALS herself last year was \u201cmy worst possible nightmare,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n Gurnett Bander and Netherland say they\u2019re not certain they\u2019ll 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\u2019t need it after all, and die of their diseases. But both women insist that the choice should be theirs.<\/p>\n \u201cIt can offer so much peace of mind,\u201d Netherland said. \u201cI thought, \u2018People should have this option.\u2019 Now, they will.\u201d<\/p>\n The New Old Age is produced through a partnership with\u00a0<\/em>The New York Times<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n This <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/kffhealthnews.org\/aging\/physician-assisted-death-suicide-medical-aid-in-dying-legal-new-york-illinois\/”>article<\/a><\/a>; first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/kffhealthnews.org”>KFF<\/a> Health News<\/a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-nd\/4.0\/”>Creative<\/a> Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<img src=”https:\/\/kffhealthnews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2023\/04\/kffhealthnews-icon.png?w=150"<\/a>; style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”><\/p>\n
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