Life is precious, but it eventually ends for all of us. This includes about 150,000 New Yorkers each year. Most suffering can be controlled at the end of life, particularly with good palliative or hospice care. However, some people experience unbearable suffering. No one should have to. Every dying person who is mentally competent should have the right to die, if possible, in a way that she or he decides and controls, consistent with his or her values and beliefs. For those who are dying the issue is not whether they will die, but instead how they are going to die and who makes the decision. Medical aid in dying (MAID) should be an available option. It occurs when a terminally ill, mentally competent adult patient, who is likely to die within six months, takes prescribed medicines, which must be self-administered, to end suffering and achieve a peaceful death.

Dying patients with mental capacity have a legally recognized right to end their suffering by having life sustaining treatment withheld or withdrawn, such as a feeding tube, ventilator or dialysis. Patients also may voluntarily stop eating and drinking. Another option which hastens death is palliative sedation. It is appropriate for dying patients who have uncontrollable symptoms. Health care agents can and often do make decisions, in accordance with the wishes of patients, or in their best interests, to hasten the deaths of patients. So, laws either authorize or permit patients to hasten, or have their deaths hastened, by various means. However, terminally ill, decisionally capable dying patients do not, in most jurisdictions, including New York, have the right to hasten their deaths by MAID. This is unjustifiable and unfair to dying patients who may not be receiving life sustaining treatments or who may not want to go through the process of voluntarily stopping eating and drinking or palliative sedation. This is especially so since MAID is another reasonable end-of-life option, a better choice for some terminally ill patients. Most importantly, it is a safe, effective, and ethical medical practice that benefits patients and causes no harm to anyone.