Chapter 5.B: Medical Aid in Dying

Note 2

Through December 31, 2024 (per data collected through January 25, 2025), physicians had written 4,881 prescriptions under Oregon's Death with Dignity Act.  Of the 4,881 patients, 3,243 died after ingesting the prescribed medication (66%), a small number were still alive, and the rest died of their illnesses. During 2024, 0.9 percent of deaths in Oregon resulted from aid in dying. Of the 3,243 patients who dies by aid in dying, 69 percent had cancer and 91 percent were enrolled in hospice care. 

The annual reports for 1998-2024 are archived here.

Note 3

In November 2024, West Virginia voters amended the state constitution to prohibit medical aid in dying. The amendment narrowly passed, 50.4 to 49.6 percent.

In December 2025, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed into law SB 250, which will allow aid in dying starting in September 2026.

Also in December 2025, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced she would sign A136/S138 to permit aid in dying, once amendments are adopted in early 2026,

With the legalizations in Illinois and New York, nearly one in three Americans will live in a state that permits aid in dying.

In February 2012, the Georgia Supreme Court struck Georgia's aid in dying ban down. Since 1994, Georgia's law prohibited the public promotion and provision of aid in dying services, but did not reach the private decision of patient and physician to choose physician aid in dying. The court rejected the law on first amendment grounds--since it targeted those who publicly advertised or offered services but not others. Interestingly, even while the law was in force, there were not any reports that physicians misused their freedom to provide physician aid in dying privately. In May 2012, the Georgia governor signed new legislation banning aid in dying.

For discussion of the increasing legal recognition of aid in dying, see Orentlicher, Pope and Rich, "The Changing Legal Climate for Physician Aid in Dying," 311 JAMA 1961 (2014).

While every U.S. jurisdiction that has legalized aid in dying requires the patient to self-administer the lethal dose of medication, other countries permit administration by health care providers, usually physicians, but sometimes nurse practitioners. And data from those countries indicate that health provider administration is much preferred. In the Canadian government’s 2024 report on the country’s experience with aid in dying, health practitioners administered the medication in all cases (16,499 for the year). The Netherlands reports similar data—in 2015, physician-administration outnumbered self-administration by 829 to 22. We don't know exactly why this is so, but the Canadian government has observed that many physicians and nurses “are less comfortable with self-administration due to concerns around the ability of the patient to effectively self-administer the series of medications, and the complications that may ensue.” For more detail, click here.