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.
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Tomaino → photograph → 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.
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which → pen → bill
Eisner wrote, “I was born with a recessive genetic neuromuscular condition called nemaline myopathy.
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I → write → condition
I use a portable ventilator to breathe and a motorized wheelchair to get around . . .
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I → use → ventilator
I’m not terminal — but many times, my own body can feel like a straitjacket.
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body → ’m → straitjacket
God willing, I’ve got another couple of decades left.”
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I → get → decades
The next day, due to a malfunction with his ventilator, Eisner was rendered unconscious and left in a vegetative state.
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Eisner → render → state
Last week, he passed away at just 35 years old.
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he → pass → ?
Last month, New York’s Medical Aid in Dying law — the law he warned against — took effect.
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he → warn → 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.
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Eisner → befriend → intellect
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.
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intellectuals → offer → UnHerd
For a man whose physical world could be severely constrained, Eisner built a remarkably expansive intellectual and social one.
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Eisner → constrain → one
His life was a living rebuttal of those pushing assisted-suicide laws.
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life → live → 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.
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lives → have → pain
That message becomes more profound as the boundaries around assisted death continue to expand elsewhere.
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boundaries → become → death
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 children ages 1 to 12 to be eligible under certain circumstances.
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children → pass → circumstances
Last year in Spain, Noelia Castillo, a 25-year-old woman, won the “right” to die after a long court battle with her parents.
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Castillo → win → parents
Castillo had made multiple suicide attempts, having struggled with psychiatric illness and reported that she’d been sexually assaulted.
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she → make → illness
Society should’ve provided her with protection, psychiatric treatment and support.
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Society → provide → protection
Instead, the story became about her fight for permission to die.
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story → become → permission
In Canada, the story’s even more staggering.
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story → ’ → Canada
As Rupa Subramanya reported last year, “One out of every 20 deaths in Canada is triggered by the government-run assisted suicide program.”
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One → report → program
In Ontario alone, 219 people in 2023 received medical assistance in dying by the end of the day after they requested it, with about 30% of those deaths occurring the very same day.
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% → receive → deaths
Research indicates that suicide attempts are usually regretted by people who survive them, an important detail given how rushed many are.
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many → indicate → them
In light of his suffering and dependence, Eisner lived on the wrong side of the line assisted-suicide backers draw when it comes to whose lives have value.
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lives → live → value
He couldn’t breathe without mechanical help; he couldn’t get around without a motorized wheelchair.
His body, as he put it himself, could feel like a “straitjacket.
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he → breathe → straitjacket
And yet he wanted more time.
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he → want → time
That is what makes his testimony so powerful: Eisner chose life enthusiastically every time he left his house.
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he → make → house
The night before his coma, he recorded a video explaining how someone unfamiliar with his ventilator could reattach and repair it in an emergency.
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someone → record → emergency
His friends would soon realize just how prescient that instinct had been.
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instinct → realize → ?
Those who spent time with him also remembered something that now feels profound: how deeply he appreciated life’s simplest pleasures.
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he → spend → pleasures
His Instagram feed is filled with flowers and cats, outings with friends and encounters with famous faces like Kelsey Grammer and his friend Rick Santorum.
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feed → fill → Grammer
This was not a man waiting around to die.
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This → wait → ?
He was too busy living.
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He → live → ?
In his Post column, Eisner warned, “The logic of assisted suicide leads inevitably to the conclusion that those with doctor-approved expiration dates are living lives not worth living.”
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those → warn → lives
New York lawmakers rejected his warning.
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lawmakers → reject → warning
But Eisner left behind something more powerful than an argument: the evidence of his own 35 years.
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Eisner → leave → years
Dovie Eisner feared a society increasingly willing to tell people in bodies like his that death could be an act of dignity.
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death → fear → dignity
His own life offered the answer: Dignity is never in the dying; it’s in insisting on living, fully and enthusiastically.
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it → offer → dying
Bethany Mandel writes and podcasts at The Mom Wars and is a homeschooling mother of six in greater Washington, DC.
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Mandel → write → Washington
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