How Aid in Dying Became Medical, Not Moral

In rural Iowa, Peg Sandeen recalls, living with AIDS meant living under the cloud of your neighbors’ judgment. After her husband, John, fell ill in 1992, the rumors began swirling. The couple had almost learned to live with the stigma when things took a turn for the worse.

In 1993, ravaged by his disease and running out of options, John wanted to make one final decision: to die on his own terms, with the help of life-ending medication. But at the time, there was no way to convey to his doctors what he wanted. As the debate over assisted dying raged in far-off Oregon, the headlines offered up only loaded words: murder, euthanasia, suicide.

John was adamant that what he wanted was not suicide. He loved his life: his wife, who had married him even though he had asked her to leave when he learned he was H.I.V. positive; their 2-year-old daughter, Hannah; and playing Neil Young songs on guitar, a pleasure that was rapidly being taken from him as his faculties slipped away.

“This was not a man who wanted to commit suicide, at all,” said Ms. Sandeen, now the chief executive of Death With Dignity, a group that supports aid-in-dying laws across the country. To her, the word only added more judgment to the homophobia and AIDS phobia that they — and others who found themselves in a similar position — were facing.