Medical Aid in Dying Act: 24-year-old died suffering; her parents want New Yorkers to have the choice of life-ending medication

Vibrant and warm, she had moved to New York City — first Queens, then Brooklyn, then Manhattan — from her family’s home in New Jersey after high school to pursue a career in ballet and yoga. She had found her niche, combining painting with live performance, and was driven by her creative endeavors.

“Here’s a young lady that just strove to live,” her father, Daren Eilert, told the Advance/SILive.com from his home in Dallas, Texas.

When sores began to appear on Ayla’s tongue, and she complained of pain in her throat, Daren and Ayla’s mom, Amy, encouraged Ayla from afar to seek medical treatment. Months of misdiagnoses eventually led to a biopsy, which in turn led to the unthinkable: On Sept. 23, 2021, roughly three months before her 24th birthday, Ayla was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue. Six days later, Ayla underwent surgery to remove half her tongue — which was then rebuilt with part of her thigh — and 22 lymph nodes.

Less than seven months later, she was dead.

The Medical Aid in Dying Act, which counts Staten Island state Sen. Jessica Scarcella-Spanton as its co-prime sponsor, could change that. Also known as M.A.i.D., the legislation would allow mentally competent, terminally ill patients over the age of 18 the choice of self-administering prescribed life-ending medication.

The lack of advancement has been frustrating for Scarcella-Spanton.

“I don’t know how you can be against it,” said the 34-year-old senator, Savino’s immediate successor. “This is not a partisan issue, it’s not a Democrat versus Republican issue. It’s a moral issue, it’s about what’s right, and giving people a choice in their end-of-life decisions. ... I know what bothers me about the pushback on this bill is that you hear people’s stories, they’re screaming in pain on the way out, and then that’s the memory they leave behind.”

For Scarcella-Spanton — a longtime advocate of medical aid in dying and self-described Catholic — providing an ailing person the choice to end their life under medical supervision is “common sense.”

“I always tell people if you don’t like this policy, if you don’t like this option, don’t use it. You don’t have to use it, but maybe your mom wants to use it, maybe your dad wants to use it, maybe somebody who’s terminally ill in your family, they would choose to use it.”

ASKING FOR M.A.I.D.

The process of procuring the prescription for life-ending medication should the legislation pass would be a rigorous one.

Among the extensive criteria, referred to as “guardrails” by Scarcella-Spanton: It must be determined a person has a medically confirmed incurable condition that would kill them within six months (a person wouldn’t qualify solely because of age or disability, and there is no list of qualifying medical conditions); the person must be deemed to have the mental capacity to make an informed decision about taking life-ending medication; and the person must be able to self-administer the medication, without aid. The bill’s language is specific to note medication must be ingested orally; lethal injection and lethal infusion are not allowed under the proposed law.

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