Terminally ill Brittany Maynard invoked the Oregon right to death-with-dignity law on November 1, ingesting prescribed lethal drugs to end her life.
The 29-year-old was diagnosed with brain cancer in January and given six months to live, prompting her to move to Oregon, where assisted death is legal. In an interview last month with Compassion & Choices, a nonprofit advocating “end-of-life choice,” Maynard did not emphasize her impending death, but the importance of keeping life in perspective.
“Seize the day. What’s important to you? What do you care about? What matters? Pursue that. Forget the rest,” Maynard said.
Compassion & Choices released statements from Maynard updating the public on her health and status on taking her life. In an October 24 statement, Maynard explained that she was suffering headaches, neck pain and severe seizures.
Compassion & Choices defends assisted euthanasia by appealing to the desire for calm, saying that “simply having the choice provides people a sense of peace in the face of uncertainty and fear that their suffering might be unbearable. It allows people the freedom to die in control, with dignity.”
Oregon was the first of five states to validate death-with-dignity statutes, now standing alongside Vermont, New Mexico, Washington and Montana. According to a report released by the Oregon Public Health Division, just over 750 individuals have died via lethal pills prescribed under the Death with Dignity Act. Last year, the median age of those who passed was 71 – more than double Maynard’s years.
Art Caplan, head of the Division of Medical Ethics at New York University, suggested in a video statement that Maynard’s youth might spur a shift in thinking among the younger demographic.
“Critics are worried about her partly because she’s speaking to that new audience, and they know that the younger generation of America has shifted attitudes about gay marriage and the use of marijuana, and maybe they are going to have that same impact in pushing physician-assisted suicide forward,” Caplan said in an op-ed for Medscape.
Compassion & Choices has created “The Brittany Fund,” a website that includes Maynard’s obituary and graphics to share on social media to support death-with-dignity. Prior to her death, Maynard was frustrated by the way her situation was being used by various parties to make a point.
“We as a country have real issues with the way doctors are trained to speak about, educate and embrace realities of death,” Maynard wrote Oct. 23. “As a terminally ill patient, I find it disrespectful and disturbing when people discuss my personal health with details that are not accurate to push an agenda.”
According to a 2014 Gallup poll, nearly 70 percent of Americans support physician-assisted euthanasia. However, among those who attend a church service weekly, only 48 percent support the choice to end a patient’s life through painless means.
The subject of ending one’s own life is charged with a broad spectrum of emotional rhetoric, with supporters calling it “death with dignity” and adversaries referring to the process as “assisted suicide.” When placed in the midst of a life or death situation, where should Christians fall on this spectrum?
Sensitivity is key. Before judging those who have elected to end their lives, it is important to realize that most who choose “death with dignity” are cancer patients. These individuals deal with severe pain and the threat of an unpredictable, imminent death hanging constantly over their heads. The emotional and mental stress of a terminal illness is an experience that those blessed with good health would struggle to fathom.
On the other hand, Christians claim that God sent his perfect Son to die in payment for the sins of the world, so that humans would not have to do so. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 tells followers of Christ, “You are not your own; you were bought at a price.”
If we do not own our lives, do we have the right to end them?
The heavy media coverage of Maynard’s choice to end her life focused largely upon her young age. But the issue extends to a larger ethical dilemma – the value of life itself. With the Death with Dignity Act thrust into the political spotlight, it will be interesting to see whether other states legalize assisted euthanasia and how religious communities will choose to react.