The Changing Legal Climate for Physician Aid in Dying

While once widely rejected as a health care option, physician aid in dying is receiving increased recogni-tion as a response to the suffering of patients at the end of life. With aid in dying, a physician writes a pre-scription for life-ending medication for an eligible patient. Following the recommendation of the Ameri-can Public Health Association, the term aid in dying rather than “assisted suicide ” is used to describe the practice.1 In this Viewpoint, we describe the changing legal climate for physician aid in dying occurring in several states (Table). Voters inOregonandWashingtonhave legalizedaid in dying by public referendum, legislators in Vermont havedonesobystatutoryenactment,andcourts inMon-tana and New Mexico have done so by judicial rulings