When NPR host Diane Rehm’s husband John Rehm could no longer bear his worsening Parkinson’s, she says he asked a doctor to help him die, but he was refused. NBC News reports. Receiving medical assistance to die is illegal in Maryland, where the Rehms lived. So Diane Rehm said it took nine painful days of refusing her husband food and water, and he died of dehydration, NBC reports.
Advocacy group Compassion & Choices told NBC that mentally competent, terminally ill adults like John Rehm should be able to request life-ending medication, which is different from the more controversial issue of assisted suicide. According to the group, 65 percent of Amercians support more options of quicker, more painless death, NBC reports.