How We Die: A Panel Investigating the Ethics of Medical Aid in Dying (MAID)

Terri Laws, Thaddeus Mason Pope, and Mara Buchbinder

2024-2025: How We Live and Die: Stories, Values, and Communities

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Mudd Center

How We Die: A Panel Investigating the Ethics of Medical Aid in Dying (MAID)

Tuesday, February 11, 2025, 4:00-6:00 pm

Often discussed as a “good death,” Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD) can also be highly contested. For instance, while MAiD may highlight a patient’s autonomy, it can come into conflict with a physician’s oath to do “no harm.” Additionally, the issue of bodily autonomy touches on complex and historically fraught issues. Other significant questions have recently surfaced about how vulnerable groups without access to robust health care and treatment may be affected by MAiD. The panel of three discussants and a moderator will probe these and other questions related to MAiD.

Terri Laws

Terri Laws

Associate Professor, African and African American Studies, University of Michigan-Dearborn

Public Lecture Title: African Americans, Religion, and the Legalization of Death With Dignity
Tuesday, February 11, 2025, 4:00-6:00 pm

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Death With Dignity legislation is one feature of a national right-to-die social-political movement. This talk focuses on the influence of race and religion as key factors contributing to disproportionately few Black requests for medically aided death as an end-of-life choice.

Thaddeus Mason Pope

Thaddeus Mason Pope

Professor of Law, Mitchell Hamline School of Law
Fellow, The Hastings Center

Public Lecture Title: Medical Aid in Dying: Expanding Access to Clinician Assisted Death
Tuesday, February 11, 2025, 4:00-6:00 pm

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Pope uses state and federal law to achieve value-concordant care, ensuring that you get healthcare you want and avoid healthcare you do not. While this sometimes entails improving functionality of existing tools like advance directives, it increasingly includes expanding end-of-life options like VSED and medical aid in dying.

Mara Buchbinder

Mara Buchbinder

Professor and Vice Chair of Social Medicine, Adjunct Professor of Anthropology, and Core Faculty in the Center for Bioethics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Public Lecture Title: Stories of Assisted Dying in America: New Narratives for Old Debates
Tuesday, February 11, 2025, 4:00-6:00 pm

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In this presentation, Dr. Buchbinder will discuss how her anthropological research on the implementation of Vermont’s 2013 Patient Choice and Control at End of Life Act has helped her to rethink some of the dominant public and media narratives about medically assisted death.

Kerry Egan

Kerry Egan

Hospice Chaplain and Author

Tuesday, February 11, 2025, 4:00-6:00 pm

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Mudd Center

The Mudd Center

  • Washington and Lee University
    209 Mattingly House
    Lexington, VA 24450

Melissa R. Kerin

Director

Daniel Ranweiler

Postdoctoral Fellow

Kate Saacke

Senior Program Coordinator