If the state of Florida can sanction — and profit from — gambling and the licensing of adult entertainment, then why won’t it extend the same respect for personal choice to those who are terminally ill?
The contradiction is glaring. Medical aid in dying (MAID) legislation would allow mentally capable, terminally ill adults — those diagnosed by two physicians as having six months or less to live — the option to request medication they could self-administer to end their lives peacefully. This is not about coercion, and it’s certainly not about encouraging death. It’s about ensuring that when death is imminent, suffering need not be.
Thomas Nagle is a retired economics professor. (courtesy, Thomas Nagle)
Florida lawmakers have had the chance to debate this issue. MAID bills have been filed in the past three legislative sessions, yet not one has been given a fair hearing. Meanwhile, public support continues to climb. A July 2025 poll of 797 active registered Republicans by the University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Research Lab found that 65% support allowing medical aid in dying for terminally ill patients.
Opponents often couch their objections in moral or religious language, but that reasoning is selectively applied. The state doesn’t ban high-stakes poker tournaments, even though they can devastate families financially. It doesn’t outlaw strip clubs, even though they may challenge some people’s moral comfort. In those cases, the government steps back and says: “Adults should be free to decide for themselves.”
So why is that same logic not applied to the terminally ill? Why are Floridians trusted to risk their paychecks on a blackjack table, but not trusted to decide — under strict safeguards — how their life should end when death is already certain?
Without MAID legislation, many terminally ill patients endure prolonged suffering, sometimes in direct contradiction to their own wishes and values. Others take desperate measures in isolation, ending their lives without medical support or counseling — traumatic for themselves and devastating for those they leave behind. In states where MAID is legal — currently 11 states plus Washington, D.C. — the process is tightly regulated, abuse is virtually nonexistent, and the mere availability of the option brings comfort even to those who never use it.
MAID legislation is not about encouraging people to die. It is about giving them the freedom to choose how they meet death — whether that means enduring until nature takes its course or taking a gentle, controlled exit when suffering becomes unbearable. Floridians deserve lawmakers who will treat the freedom to die with dignity as seriously as they treat the freedom to bet on a football game. Anything less is hypocrisy. If our leaders truly believe in personal liberty, they cannot continue to cherry-pick which freedoms to protect and which to deny based on political expedience.
It’s time Florida lawmakers recognized that compassion and freedom are not mutually exclusive. When a terminally ill person’s final chapter is being written, it should be in their own hand — not dictated by a Legislature that claims to defend liberty while denying it in life’s most intimate moment.
Thomas Nagle is a retired economics professor living with his wife in Miami.
