Dovie Eisners life debunked the delusions of assisted-suicide enthusiasts

On May 17, 2025, Nicholas Tomaino, now an editor at The Washington Post, photographed his friend Dovie Eisner holding a copy of the New York Post with his byline.It was a proud moment for Eisner, a profoundly disabled New Yorker who’d penned a heartfelt piece in opposition to a proposed state assisted-suicide bill, which has since become law. Eisner wrote, “I was born with a recessive genetic neuromuscular condition called nemaline myopathy.I use a portable ventilator to breathe and a motorized wheelchair to get around .

..

I’m not terminal — but many times, my own body can feel like a straitjacket.God willing, I’ve got another couple of decades left.”The next day, due to a malfunction with his ventilator, Eisner was rendered unconscious and left in a vegetative state.

Last week, he passed away at just 35 years old.Last month, New York’s Medical Aid in Dying law — the law he warned against — took effect.Despite his quiet, unassuming life in Brooklyn in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family, Eisner somehow befriended some of the most influential minds in the conservative political world through his intellect, perseverance and sheer will.Since his death, prominent intellectuals like Princeton University Prof.Robert George and The Washington Post’s Ramesh Ponnuru have offered reflections, alongside obituaries in UnHerd, Fox News and National Review.For a man whose physical world could be severely constrained, Eisner built a remarkably expansive intellectual and social one.His life was a living rebuttal of those pushing assisted-suicide laws.It was testimony to the fact that disabled lives have value, and that lives filled with pain and limitation can still be very much worth living.That message becomes more profound as the boundaries around assisted death continue to expand elsewhere.The same week Eisner passed away, reports emerged that the first toddler in the Netherlands had been euthanized since the country expanded its euthanasia rules to allow ...