In NC, the fatally ill see new support for the choice of medically assisted death | Opinion

Marshall Hardy, a retired statistician and an activist for human and civil rights, regularly walks to the entrance of Central Prison in Raleigh, the site of North Carolina’s Death Row, to join a group that protests against the death penalty.

This week, he didn’t go. He was absorbing the shock of receiving another kind of death sentence. A few days before, a doctor had diagnosed him with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

The incurable and fatal disease hit Hardy late at age 76, but at his age it will proceed quickly, eventually taking away his ability to walk, swallow or even to breathe.

“I’ve just got the shakes, and I’m very weak and don’t sleep that well,” Hardy said. “My diaphragm muscles are pretty paralyzed.”

He is taking the brutal news bravely, but he also wants an option that is not yet available in North Carolina – medically assisted death.

Eleven states and the District of Columbia provide the option under what are known as medically assisted death or MAID laws. New York has passed one that is awaiting the governor’s signature.

Hardy doesn’t want to commit suicide. He wants to live as long as he can without severe mental or physical anguish, but he also wants the option of controlling when dies. In hospice, he said, patients can lose access to treatments for their conditions..

“I would get treatment even up to the time that I die,” Hardy said. “If my pain and suffering get so bad, I’m going to make that decision (to die). But people can get prosecuted for murder without a MAID law.”

State Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, has sponsored a MAID law for 10 years, but it has received little support in the Republican-controlled General Assembly. This year, two prominent Republicans, Reps. Donny Lambeth and Julia Howard, have joined her in sponsoring a bill that seeks $150,000 for a study of MAID laws. Still, House Bill 410 has been marooned in the Rules Committee since March without a hearing.

“So many people are passionate about this choice,” said Harrison, who lost a sister to a brain tumor and a cousin and nephew to ALS. “We’re just trying to have a hearing so people can speak.”

In North Carolina, opposition to MAID laws is strongest among religious groups, medical organizations and advocates for disabled people. They fear that legalizing medically assisted death devalues life and could lead to the euthanasia of vulnerable people.

Ed Tiryakian pushes back against what he says are misplaced fears about medically assisted death. He’s the founder and executive director of the nonprofit Dying Right NC, a group run by all volunteers.

Medically assisted death – a process in which a terminally ill patient consumes a lethal combination of five drugs – is not what its opponents call a suicide, Tiryakian said. Rather, he said, it is a choice to have control over what doctors have assessed is inevitable within six months.

“We can’t choose how we’re born or where we’re born,” he said. “But we can choose how we die and where we die.”

MAID laws bar the medically assisted death for people with dementia, intellectual disabilities or mental illness, and the drugs must be taken by the patient, not administered by a doctor or someone else.

The option of controlling the time of one’s death allows a patient to draw loved ones close, Tiryakian said, “where they can say ‘I forgive you, I love you, or forgive me.’”

For all the controversy, the record in states that have MAID laws show that many who have access to the option don’t take it.

A 2023 review of Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act, the nation’s oldest MAID law enacted in 1997, reported that since the inception of the law “a total of 4,274 people have received prescriptions under the DWDA and 2,847 people (67%) have died from ingesting the medications.”

Hardy doesn’t know that he would ingest the drugs, but he would like to have the option as a source of comfort.

There’s much to be debated about the legal and moral aspects of giving the terminally ill control over their death. But there’s no harm in having a debate. Legislative leaders should allow House 410 to have a full hearing.

Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-404-7583, or nbarnett@newsobserver.com

This story was originally published November 2, 2025 at 4:30 AM.