Blazingcatfur

We go inside a story about one woman’s journey to die.

I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s and remember being fascinated by the controversy around Jack Kevorkian. He was a Michigan doctor who argued that sick people should be allowed to die on their own terms rather than suffer through a grueling illness. Was he a traitor to his oath to “do no harm”? Or was he an angel of mercy, letting victims of disease exercise one last bit of agency over their failing bodies? Kevorkian, who went to prison for helping dozens of people with “physician-assisted suicides,” seemed so radical at the time.

Now his ideas are commonplace. Ten states and lots of Western nations have assisted-dying laws. But they’re mostly built for people with a life-ending diagnosis.

Canada is trying something more. There, a patient can have a state-sanctioned death if she is suffering — but not necessarily dying — from an illness. For the cover story of yesterday’s New York Times Magazine, Katie Engelhart followed one woman’s journey to die. It’s a nuanced portrait of a person racked with pain and a tour of some controversial bioethics. I spoke with Katie about the difficulty in knowing what’s right and what’s wrong when people suffer.