Advocates across the Commonwealth shared their heartfelt reasons for wanting access to compassionate option in Massachusetts

Nearly 100 advocates from across Massachusetts attended scheduled meetings with their legislators Tuesday to share their personal stories of seeing a loved one suffer painfully and needlessly at the very end of life. Advocates highlighted the growing momentum and support for the End of Life Options Act (S1486/H2505), which last session had more sponsors than ever before, made it through the Public Health and Health Care Finance Committees, and has already had a hearing this session.

Melissa Stacy, northeast regional advocacy director for Compassion & Choices Action Network, was among those urging Massachusetts lawmakers to pass the legislation, which gives terminally ill patients the option to alleviate unbearable suffering at the end of life.

“We are here today to urge our legislators to pass legislation this year that will provide terminally ill patients with the OPTION to alleviate unbearable suffering. Nothing more, nothing less,” Stacy said. “We’re incredibly thankful for our bill sponsors and champions who are working tirelessly to help make 2025 the year that terminally ill people have access to this option.”

The legislation would allow a mentally capable, terminally ill adult the option to request and self-ingest prescription medication to peacefully end their suffering if it becomes unbearable. The bill includes strict eligibility requirements and more than a dozen safeguards that would make it the most comprehensive and strictest law in the country, including a requirement that two healthcare providers certify that a patient has a prognosis of six months or less to live, and makes it a crime to coerce a terminally ill person into using medical aid in dying.  

Advocates across Massachusetts spoke in support of the legislation, many sharing deeply personal stories.

Becky Gladstone of Boston, whose husband Doug was diagnosed with brain cancer in July of last year, said, “Doug did not choose to have GBM (glioblastoma) – GBM chose him. And because GBM will strip away his life well before he ever thought he’d die, Doug is hoping that he will have the chance to have the right to an End of Life option that puts the option in his hands – so that when he is ready, when he can’t fight any longer, he can finally be at peace. To die in a way that is consistent with the values he has always lived by.” 

“When I begin working with clients, one of the first questions I ask is ‘What would a good death look like for you?’ Again and again, I hear some version of ‘I want to die at home,’ ‘I want my loved ones nearby,’ ‘I don’t want to be a burden,’ ‘I want to have control.’ And above all — ‘I don’t want to be in pain,’ said Aimee Yawnick of Norwell, MA, end of life coach, educator and death doula. “I have sat at too many bedsides where suffering was visible, unrelenting, and avoidable — where loved ones begged, ‘I wish there was something we could do.’ This bill is that something.”

“Those final tortuous days for Chuck only deepened my conviction that we need the option of medical aid in dying in Massachusetts to peacefully end unbearable suffering for mentally capable, terminally ill adults with six months or less to live,” said Barbara Webster of Upton, about her brother.

She continued, “After witnessing Chuck’s passing, even his former wife, a Catholic who previously opposed medical aid in dying, realized how much more humane and compassionate this option would have been for him, and that turned her into a supporter.” 

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