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Hey listeners, it's Lindsay Smith Rogers. Today, what has long been called assisted suicide and is now called medical aid in dying.

Dr. Jeff Kahn, who leads the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins, and Anna Masaryani,

a legal expert at the Institute, joined Stephanie Desmond to discuss the increased ability in the

United States and around the world to help terminally ill patients

choose to die on their own terms and the legal and ethical questions surrounding it.

Let's listen.

Anna Mastroyani and Jeff Kahn, thanks so much for joining me.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you for having us.

So today, the topic is assisted suicide, and it's something that raises a litany of complex

medical and religious concerns. And so I wanted to start, Jeff, what is assisted suicide?

It's a good question, Stephanie. And I think the first thing we'll probably want to talk about

is the terminology. People may have heard the term assisted suicide or physician assisted suicide. The term

of art these days and then one that's most accepted in discussion about policy as we'll get into

is medical aid and dying. Maid is the acronym. But over time, it's had various terms applied to it.

Voluntary euthanasia. Aid and dying, as you said, assisted suicide and now we're using

Maid. And Anna, can I think tell us why it's important that we use some terms and not others.

From a legal perspective, because that is my core training, calling it suicide they've discovered,

...