‘This is Cancer in The End’ by Amanda Villegas

In a series of photographs, Amanda Villegas documents the final month in the life of her husband, Chris Davis, as he dies from bladder cancer. The photographs are raw and arresting. They show the signs of medical intervention on Chris’s emaciated body. They accentuate the tubes, the wires, and the stitches that mark his body and his obvious pain as he lies dying. The series includes photographs that display the grief of his friends and family as they bear witness to the end of Chris’s life. In her commentary on the series, Amanda states that it was her intention to show the ‘harsh reality of terminal illness’ to highlight the need for ‘more compassionate end-of-life laws.’ The photographs were first shared via Google Drive in 2019, then appeared in the news media in 2021, and were finally published as an essay in Photographic Journal in 2023.

California’s End of Life Option Act was enacted in June 2016. The law allowed adult residents of California to obtain a prescription for drugs that would end their lives if they had a terminal illness and had six months or less to live. The drugs had to be self-ingested, and the patient was required to make two verbal requests for the prescription that were at least 15 days apart. After Chris’ death in 2019, Amanda began working with Compassion and Choices, a non-profit organization, to advocate for changes to the law that would have allowed him to receive medical aid in dying. Chris wanted to received medical aid in dying but was unable to do so because the hospice where he was treated provided misinformation about the legality and procedural requirements of the process. In the end, he died before the 15-day waiting period had elapsed. In 2022, California’s law was changed to reduce the mandatory waiting period between verbal requests to 48 hours. The 2022 amendments made two additional changes to make it easier for patients to access medical aid in dying. First, the law requires healthcare facilities to post their policies related to medical aid in dying on their websites. Second, the law requires healthcare providers to document and date requests for medical aid in dying so that the requests are visible to other providers if the patient transfers their care. Amanda’s photographs regularly appeared in media articles reporting on the amendments to the law.