Brittany Maynard, a 29 year old woman who moved to Oregon with her family in order to take advantage of that state’s Death with Dignity law, died yesterday. She had been diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme–a rare and aggressive brain cancer, in which the median survival rate with treatment is 14 months.
Brittany used her life after her diagnosis to create a plan for how she wanted to live the rest of her life, and how she wanted to die, but she also chose to ignite a national conversation around whether people have the right to choose to end their lives, when they are diagnosed with a terminal illness such as hers. As she herself argued: “Today is the day I have chosen to pass away with dignity in the face of my terminal illness, this terrible brain cancer that has taken so much from me … but would have taken so much more.”