Did you know there are currently eleven U.S. states that have enacted medical aid in dying or physician-assisted death for the terminally ill?
Here’s the list: Oregon, Washington, Montana, Vermont, California, Colorado, Washington, D.C., Hawaii, New Jersey, Maine, and New Mexico.
But what if you are not a resident of one of these states?
CBS News Health Watch stated that Vermont removed its residency requirement in May 2023, and Oregon did the same two months later. Aid in dying is effectively permitted in Montana due to a 2009 court decision, but residency rules are not specified in the ruling. New York and California both recently deliberated on legislation to permit nonresidents to access aid in dying, but neither proposal was approved.
Here is more of what CBS News reported on the safeguards in place to protect the rights of people while not imposing unlawful harm:
In the 18 months after Francine Milano was diagnosed with a recurrence of the ovarian cancer she thought she’d beaten 20 years ago, she traveled twice from her home in Pennsylvania to Vermont. She went not to ski, hike or leaf-peep, but to arrange to die.
“I really wanted to take control over how I left this world,” said the 61-year-old who lives in Lancaster. “I decided that this was an option for me.”
Dying with medical assistance wasn’t an option when Milano learned in early 2023 that her disease was incurable. At that point, she would have had to travel to Switzerland — or live in the District of Columbia or one of the 10 states where medical aid in dying was legal.
But Vermont lifted its residency requirement in May 2023, followed by Oregon two months later. (Montana effectively allows aid in dying through a 2009 court decision, but that ruling doesn’t spell out rules around residency. And though New York and California recently considered legislation that would allow out-of-staters to secure aid in dying, neither provision passed.)
Despite the limited options and the challenges — such as finding doctors in a new state, figuring out where to die and traveling when too sick to walk to the next room, let alone climb into a car — dozens have made the trek to the two states that have opened their doors to terminally ill nonresidents seeking aid in dying.
At least 26 people have traveled to Vermont to die, representing nearly 25% of the reported assisted deaths in the state from May 2023 through this June, according to the Vermont Department of Health. In Oregon, 23 out-of-state residents died using medical assistance in 2023, just over 6% of the state total, according to the Oregon Health Authority.
Oncologist Charles Blanke, whose clinic in Portland is devoted to end-of-life care, said he thinks that Oregon’s total is likely an undercount and he expects the numbers to grow. Over the past year, he said, he’s seen two to four out-of-state patients a week — about one-quarter of his practice — and fielded calls from across the U.S., including New York, the Carolinas, Florida and “tons from Texas.” But just because patients are willing to travel doesn’t mean it’s easy or that they get their desired outcome.
“The law is pretty strict about what has to be done,” Blanke said.