MD House revisits aid-in-dying bill just as measure appears to stall in Senate

Hours before the Maryland House of Delegates on Monday revived a perennial debate over whether to legalize medical aid in dying, state senators canceled a hearing on the bill, appearing to forgo the debate in their chamber and all but guaranteeing that the measure won’t have a serious chance of becoming law until after the next election cycle.

Aid-in-dying advocates and at least one top House member were initially under the impression that Judicial Proceedings Committee Chair Will Smith would reschedule the canceled hearing, which was planned for Wednesday.

But top senators didn’t have plans to reschedule, and House Majority Leader David Moon wrote in a text message that he heard the bill was dead in the Senate.

Ten states and Washington, D.C., allow doctors to write lethal prescriptions for dying patients to self-administer, and 14 states, including Maryland and Delaware, are considering legalizing the practice, according to the Department of Legislative Services.

Maryland lawmakers have debated the issue for a decade. In 2019, the House of Delegates passed a version of the proposal but it stalled in the Senate after a single lawmaker’s inaction led to a split vote and the proposal’s demise.

There is generally an onus on the Senate to act first if the House has passed a bill in a prior session, Moon, who supports the measure, said in an earlier phone interview.

“The ball is in the Senate’s court to see if they have the votes to get this thing moving,” he said. “That’s where the issue really lies at the moment.”

Senators appeared close to voting for the measure in 2024, but it stalled after Smith determined there weren’t enough votes to get it through.

Considering the split vote in 2019 and the fact that votes on aid-in-dying are not partisan but rather a reflection of each member’s beliefs, values and lived experiences, Smith and Senate President Bill Ferguson have indicated that they won’t bring the measure forward for a vote of the full chamber until they know that it’s guaranteed to pass.

After the measure stalled in 2024, it appeared that the Senate wouldn’t revisit it until after the 2026 election, when there might be new members who could swing the vote.

But the Senate gained several new members this session, including two serving on the Judicial Proceedings Committee. It appears they didn’t shake up the vote total.

Gov. Wes Moore has supported legalizing aid-in-dying and said last year that he would sign the measure into law if the bill had “dignity at its core,” though he has refrained from pushing lawmakers to vote favorably.

Legalizing medical aid in dying would allow an attending physician to prescribe self-administered, life-ending medication, and any ancillary medications to minimize discomfort, to someone who has a terminal illness.

Opponents worry that the medical aid-in-dying process would be ripe for abuse, among other concerns, but lawmakers sponsoring the bill say they’ve established necessary safeguards to protect people with a terminal illness who are considering ending their life with medication.

Those who qualify would need to provide multiple verbal and written requests, with signed witnesses, to their physician. They would also be required to self-administer the medication and receive a professional determination that they can make their own medical decisions.

Del. Terri Hill, a Howard County Democrat and bill sponsor in her chamber, said during Monday’s hearing that medical aid-in-dying offers “compassion and autonomy” to people facing imminent death.

Hill said that some people who testified in favor of the bill in years past are now facing an imminent death and are no longer healthy enough to offer comments to the committee.

“They have asked us over and over to give them the option, when they made it to this point, to choose how they go out,” she said. “We’ve decided, because of our failure to pass this legislation, that it was more important to us that they end their life in a way that we as a body, we as a state, though they should. We took that individual decision out of their hands.”