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

From the New York Times: 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 percent 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 percent 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, Minn., 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.” 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.)