Medical anthropology quarterly
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This article draws on ethnographic research on the implementation of Vermont's 2013 medical aid-in-dying (AID) law to explore a fundamental paradox: While public discourse characterizes AID as a mechanism for achieving an individually controlled autonomous death, the medico-legal framework that organizes it enlists social support and cultivates dependencies. Therefore, while patients pursuing AID may avoid certain types of dependency-such as those involved in bodily care-the process requires them to affirm and strengthen other bureaucratic, material, and affective forms. ⋯ I argue that assisted dying offers an opportunity to resist dominant U. S. cultural narratives that view dependency in purely negative terms and reimagine the relationships between disability, dependency, and care at the end of life.