For the second year in a row, an effort to legalize physician assisted suicide in the state of Maryland has stalled, as an “aid-in-dying” proposal has failed to move out of a Maryland Senate committee considering the measure.
State lawmakers – as they have done several times over the past decade – deliberated allowing licensed physicians to legally prescribe medication at the request of a patient who has been deemed to have “the capacity to make medical decisions,” and “who has a terminal illness with a prognosis that likely will result in the individual’s death within six months.”
Frequently called “medical aid in dying” or “death with dignity,” similar bills have been introduced in Maryland in 2015, 2017, 2019, 2020 and 2023. Last year, the bills received public hearings, but did not advance out of their respective committees.
This year’s proposal, called the “End-of-Life Options Act (The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings and the Honorable Shane E. Pendergrass Act),” failed to move out of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. A companion bill was also considered by the House Government Operations Committee and the House Judiciary Committee.
The bills had Sen. Jeff Waldstreicher (District 18 – lower Montgomery County) as the primary sponsor in the Senate, and Del. Terri Hill (District 12A – Howard County) as the primary sponsor in the House.
When the measures were introduced, the state’s Catholic bishops warned that this “deadly proposal” puts “our most vulnerable brothers and sisters at risk of making decisions for themselves that are manipulated by factors such as disability, mental instability, poverty and isolation.”
“It is deeply illogical for the State of Maryland to be seeking ways to facilitate suicide for those with a terminal illness, all the while claiming such preventable and unnecessary deaths are somehow dignified,” the bishops said in a joint statement signed by Washington Cardinal Wilton Gregory, Baltimore Archbishop William Lori, and Wilmington Bishop William Koenig. Those three dioceses encompass the state of Maryland.
The Maryland Catholic Conference joined with Maryland Against Physician Assisted Suicide (MAPAS) – a nonpartisan coalition of health care professionals, disability rights advocates, mental health professionals, advocates for seniors, and members of faith communities – in opposing the push to legalize physician-assisted suicide in Maryland.
The MCC is the public policy arm of the state’s bishops, including The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. which includes five Maryland counties, the Archdiocese of Baltimore and the Diocese of Wilmington, Delaware, which includes the Eastern Shore.
At a March 1 press conference announcing the defeat of the bill, Senate President Bill Ferguson, D-Baltimore City, acknowledged “the votes aren’t there” to pass the measure but also said the bill could be considered again in the future “when we think there’s a better chance of passage.”
Only 10 states – California, Montana, Maine, Vermont, Colorado, New Jersey, Washington, New Mexico, Hawaii and Oregon – and the District of Columbia have legalized physician assisted suicide.
