Brittany Maynard Dies With Dignity

On Saturday, November 1, twenty-nine-year-old Brittany Maynard died peacefully in her Portland home after enduring a brave battle with brain cancer.  Brittany suffered increasingly frequent and longer seizures, severe head and neck pain, in addition to stroke-like symptoms.  As her symptoms grew more severe, she chose to abbreviate the dying process by taking the aid-in-dying medication she received months ago.  Her choice is authorized under the Oregon Death With Dignity Act. 

Brittany’s obituary details the life of a fun-loving woman, full of compassion and adventure.  Her decision to die with dignity is expressed in her obituary:

Brittany chose to make a well-thought-out and informed choice to die with dignity in the face of such a terrible, painful and incurable illness. She moved to Oregon to pass away in a little yellow house she picked out in the beautiful city of Portland.  Oregon is a place that strives to protect patient rights and autonomy; she wished that her home state of California had also been able to provide terminally ill patients with the same choice. 

Brittany chose to speak out and advocate for this patient right and option, which she felt is an informed choice that should be made available to all terminally ill patients across our great nation.

“The freedom is in the choice,” she believed. “If the option of death with dignity is unappealing to anyone for any reason, they can simply choose not to avail themselves of it. Those very real protections are already in place.”

See Brittany Maynard Dies With Dignity, Compassion and Choices, Nov. 2, 2014. 

Special thanks to Sean Crowley (Compassion & Choices) for bringing this article to my attention.