Washington, D.C. authorizes medical aid in dying for eligible residents.
The general eligibility framework
- An adult (18 or older) with the capacity to make their own health care decisions
- Diagnosed with a terminal illness that, in the judgment of the attending physician and a second, independently consulting physician, is expected to result in death within six months
- Able to self-administer the prescribed medication — under every authorizing jurisdiction's law, the choice and the act must be the person's own, not performed by someone else on their behalf
- Required to make more than one request over time (typically both a spoken and a written request), often with a waiting period in between — though the exact number of days, and whether it can be shortened for someone very close to death, varies by state and has changed through recent legislation and litigation in several states
- In most authorizing states, required to be a current resident of that state — Oregon and Vermont are the notable exceptions, having removed their residency requirements after legal challenges
What's specific to Washington, D.C.
The District of Columbia's Death with Dignity Act was passed by the D.C. Council in 2016 and, after a period of congressional review required for D.C. legislation, took effect in 2017. Because D.C. is not a state, oversight runs through DC Health rather than a state health department — but the underlying eligibility framework closely mirrors the other jurisdictions on this list.
For solo agers in particular, this is worth thinking through well before a crisis: the process typically unfolds over days or weeks, not in a single appointment, and usually involves your primary physician, a specialist confirming the diagnosis, and often a hospice or palliative care team. If you don't have a spouse or adult child nearby, make sure whoever holds your health care proxy and anyone on your care team knows your wishes ahead of time — and that your state-specific paperwork, once completed, is stored somewhere they can actually find it.