A Falmouth physician who is terminally ill with Stage 4 metastatic prostate cancer filed a lawsuit this week in Suffolk Superior Court in Boston, asserting that he has a constitutional right to obtain a lethal dose of medication, with the help of his doctor, to die when he chooses and avoid needless suffering.

The lawsuit was filed by Dr. Roger M. Kligler, a long-time advocate of “medical aid in dying” laws nationwide, as well as his treating doctor, Dr. Alan Steinbach, who also works on Cape Cod. The suit was brought with the help of attorneys from Compassion & Choices, a non-profit that has worked to expand end-of-life options across the country.

In a telephone interview from his home, Kligler said that, as a physician, he has seen up close the “misery” of patients dealing with the final stages of cancer. Now that he has advanced cancer himself, he wants some control over his own death through self-administration of medication.

“It’s an option that I want to have,” said Kligler, 64, who previously practiced as a primary care doctor in Brockton.

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He said the lawsuit enables him to help himself, as well as other terminally ill patients who will face this profound question.

The lawsuit seeks a declaration that “medical aid in dying” is not a crime under Massachusetts law, and it contends there is no explicit law in the state that prohibits this option. It seeks an injunction prohibiting Attorney General Maura Healey and Cape & Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe, both of whom are named as defendants, from prosecuting physicians who provide such medications to patients with terminal illnesses, actions also commonly referred to as “assisted suicide.”

While five states – Oregon, Washington, Montana, Vermont and California – have laws or issued legal rulings permitting such deaths, Massachusetts has so far pushed back against such efforts, led by opponents who say such laws are immoral or worry they could be abused by family members who may become beneficiaries of the patient’s death. A 2012 “Death with Dignity” ballot initiative in Massachusetts failed, and a state law on the issue has stalled in the Legislature.

Kevin Diaz, an attorney for Compassion & Choices, said the doctors filed the lawsuit this week due to Kligler’s deteriorating health, as well as a legal development in a separate Massachusetts criminal case this summer that led them to think the Massachusetts courts may be receptive to this.

That case involved the Supreme Judicial Court’s decision in July affirming prosecutors’ rights to bring charges against Michelle Carter, 19, of Plainville, for her role in allegedly persuading or encouraging an 18-year-old friend, Conrad Ray III of Mattapoisett, to kill himself. Ray died in July 2014 of carbon monoxide poisoning from his truck.

In the state’s high court ruling, the justices wrote that Carter’s case did not involve “medical aid in dying” because it was “not about a person seeking to ameliorate the anguish of someone coping with a terminal illness and questioning the value of life” and was not about a person “offering support, comfort, and even assistance to a mature adult who, confronted with such circumstances, has decided to end his or her own life,” according to brief filed this week.

After reading that ruling, Diaz said, his organization thought it might be a good time to bring a legal action, because the justices appeared to understand the complexities of the issue. The suit ultimately seeks “clarification of what is allowed and not allowed” in Massachusetts. Diaz said he cannot anticipate how Healey or O’Keefe will react to the lawsuit, but he is prepared to bring this case to the state’s highest court if necessary.

The lawsuit also said that there is no Massachusetts law that explicitly prohibits “medical aid in dying,” and suggests there is a constitutional right supporting this as part of each person’s “fundamental liberty interest.”

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