Dying 29-Year-Old Launches Campaign for Death With Dignity in California, Nationwide

“I can’t even tell you the amount of relief that it provides me to know that I don’t have to die the way that it’s been described to me, that my brain tumor would take me on its own,” Brittany concludes in the video. “I hope to enjoy however many days I have on this beautiful Earth and spend as much of it outside as I can surrounded by those I love. I hope to pass in peace.”

Death-with-dignity advocate Brittany Maynard & husband Dan Diaz at their wedding (PRNewsFoto/Compassion & Choices)

Excerpts, PR Newswire – “PORTLAND, Ore., Oct. 6, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — With the few weeks she has left to live, 29-year-old California native Brittany Maynard is launching a campaign in partnership with Compassion & Choices to raise awareness about the need to expand death-with-dignity laws nationwide.

Death-with-dignity laws authorize the medical practice of aid in dying, which offers mentally competent, terminally ill adults with less than six months to live the option to request a prescription for medication they can self-administer to end their dying process if it becomes unbearable.

Brittany was diagnosed with an aggressive, fatal form of brain cancer earlier this year; realizing they had few choices, Brittany and her family relocated from the San Francisco Bay Area to Portland, Oregon, to access Oregon’s death-with-dignity law.

“Brittany’s courage to tell her story as she is dying, and alert all Americans to the choice of death with dignity, is selfless and heroic,” said Compassion & Choices President Barbara Coombs Lee, an attorney, former ER and ICU nurse and physician assistant who was an author of the Oregon death-with-dignity law.

“Most people do not have the flexibility, resources and time to uproot their family, establish residency in a death-with-dignity jurisdiction and gain the option to die on their own terms,” she added. “To accomplish that demanding task and embark on this venture to improve end-of-life care for other Americans is both noble and kind.” Full Article Here on PR Newswire

A campaign to expand access to death with dignity in Brittany’s name launches on Monday, October 6 at www.thebrittanyfund.org. All funds raised will go to supporting Compassion & Choices’ state-by-state efforts.

Choosing Death: Aid In Dying Gains Support

“That is a decision the individual has to make. It is wrong for the law to take away that option…” Stephen Hawking

Excerpts, Forbes – “…Over the past 40 years, according to Gallup, public support has grown from 53% to 70% for a doctor “being allowed to end a patient’s life by some painless means if the patient and his or her family requests it.” But when the phrase “doctor-assisted suicide” is used, support is only 51%.

Assisted Suicide Vs. Aid In Dying

“Aid in dying and assisted suicide have nothing to do with each other,” says Barbara Coombs Lee, an attorney and president of Compassion & Choices, the group dedicated to expanding and protecting the rights of the terminally ill. “One is a medical practice and the other is a felony.” In Montana, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and one county in New Mexico where right-to-die is the law, assisted suicide is outlawed.

“It’s like calling surgery a stabbing or chemotherapy poison,” says Coombs Lee, co-author of the nation’s first death-with-dignity law in Oregon.

Just as boomers have been central to the civil rights, women’s rights and gay rights movements, they are now driving the aid in dying effort. Coombs Lee says there’s a reason: “It’s the boomers’ personal experience with the deaths of their parents that has opened their eyes, awakened them to the harm [of not having the choice to end your own life, if you’re terminally ill]. And because of that, they are starting to think of their own end-of-life plans.”

A Watershed Moment

Historians may look back at July 2014 as a watershed moment for aid in dying.

Advocates like Coombs Lee have their eyes on the British House of Lords, where a major debate is underway on a bill allowing doctors to prescribe a lethal dose to terminally ill patients judged to have less than six months to live.

It has attracted high-profile religious support from no less than South African Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu and the former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, who dropped his long-standing opposition to aid in dying, saying that by opposing reform, the Church “risks promoting anguish and pain, the very opposite of a Christian message of hope.”

The Movement Now

Where is the assisted dying movement in this country in 2014?

Coombs Lee says even though progress is being made, “it’s like the early days of the women’s movement when women would meet at the kitchen tables of America and talk about their experience…we’re still in the consciousness-raising mode.”

Full Article on Forbes

The Moral Imperative in End-of-Life Choice Looks Different Now

Excerpt, Compassion & Choices – “For those of us grounded in end-of-life care and choice, the earth shook this week. Did you feel it? The shaking hasn’t stopped, but the religious foundation from which aid-in-dying opponents build their strength cracked.

Tomorrow, Britain’s House of Lords will debate a bill to authorize assisted dying as a legitimate medical practice. Last week former archbishop of Canterbury, Lord George Carey, recanted his position of opposition and declared his full support. A few days later Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, perhaps the most visible symbol of moral authority in the world, voiced his own strong support for choice in dying.

The bill in Parliament is modeled on Oregon’s 20-year-old law, the Death With Dignity Act. A group of about 10 Oregonians worked for months preparing that document for the 1994 Oregon ballot. As one of those co-authors, I say in all humility that I am bursting with pride to see it put to use in Britain. Like Oregon’s law, the bill would allow a terminally ill, mentally competent adult to request life-ending medication to ensure a peaceful death. They can keep it on hand in case suffering in their dying process becomes unbearable, and they may self-administer it at a time of their own choosing. This bill differs from the Oregon model in that it would also authorize a physician to administer the medication.” Full Post On Compassion & Choices