By Juliana McLeod
On Nov. 1, 29-year-old Brittany Maynard ended her life in Oregon. She made this decision when she learned she was terminally ill with brain cancer last January and was given just six months to live in April.
On Oct. 1, 86-year old Jean Davies died after starving herself for five weeks. She stopped drinking water on Sept. 16 with the hope of leaving behind back pain, fainting spells and other conditions that enveloped her body, The Independent, a U.K. news source, reported.
The women, especially Maynard, have become the faces of the right-to-die debate, advocating for the right to end lives peacefully rather than suffer a lengthened, painful death.
Maynard publicized her planned death, speaking with People Magazine about her decision to take advantage of Oregon’s physician-assisted suicide law. She also released two videos on YouTube explaining the reason for ending her life rather than waiting to see what happens with her illness.
“The worst thing that could happen to me is that I wait too long because I’m trying to seize each day, but that I somehow have my autonomy taken away from me by my disease,” Maynard said in her second video.
Davies similarly sought assisted suicide in order to avoid death from her many chronic conditions, including chronic back pain and frequent fainting spells, however assisted suicide in the U.K. is illegal. Instead, she starved herself to get around the law.
Maynard, a brave woman for publicizing her decision to die before she wanted to, may have been widely accepted and supported by the public, but her cause is not.
Columnist Mark Davis wrote in the Dallas Morning News that Maynard’s decision was not the public’s business. He continued on to cite Maynard’s brief moment of hesitation in late October when she debated holding off on her assisted suicide.
“I can imagine the stern lecture [Maynard’s] new friends would have delivered if she announced that the prayers of a nation had made her reconsider taking God’s agenda into her own hands. These activists are not objective, respecting whatever choice she might have made,” Davis wrote.
So, some people do not support assisted suicide. It makes sense; helping someone die is questionable and terrifying. But what do we know about these right-to-die groups? Where is assisted suicide legal, and how does it work?
Assisted suicide is legal in Oregon, Washington and Vermont, and Montana has no laws preventing it. Death with Dignity, a national center that promotes right-to-die and provides advice for end-of-life care, explains on its website that a person can only apply for death with dignity if they are an adult, mentally stable, terminally ill and a resident of a state that allows assisted suicide. Accepted applicants may “voluntarily request and receive a prescription medication to hasten their death.”
If Maynard had waited too long and the glioblastoma began affecting her mental stability, she would have had to endure the torture of it until it eventually killed her.
Maynard probably filled out several applications in her lifetime: a college application, a job application, perhaps a loan application or a health insurance application. But imagine the smiley brunette filling out an application for permission to die; an uncomfortable thought, but the harsh truth.
For this, I respect Maynard for signing her name.
Photo courtesy Creative Commons.
