Right to Die legislation causing controversy

The idea of physician-assisted death for terminally ill patients has only recently become a hot topic of debate when a young woman from California decided to call for this to become legal nationwide.

Brittany Maynard has recently become a household name because of the CNN news story that surfaced about two weeks ago about a 29 year old woman that was tragically diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, and was given only six months to left to live.

Maynard decided to move her and her husband from their California home to Oregon, where physician-assisted suicides for terminally ill patients that is and has been legal since 1997, along with three other neighboring states. She wants to “die on her own terms” and take a medication that will kill her in 25 minutes or less pain free and easy.

Although this is not the first time someone has chosen to die this way, Maynard is one of the youngest, and because she decided to start an organization to get this doctor-assisted suicide legal all over the United States, she became the “poster child” of the cause. Since the story came out, there has been an uproar of responses to Maynard’s decision, some in support and others in opposition.

Many terminally ill patients have ridiculed her for being a coward for her decision to die “before it gets bad.” One in particular really shed some light on the subject and resonated well with me. Her name is Kara Tippetts, and she was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 36. She has been fighting it for two years, even though the cancer has metastasized into her entire body.

She has written a response called “Dear Brittany: Why We Don’t Have to Be Afraid of Dying and Suffering that We Choose Suicide,” which tells the powerful story of this woman’s journey, and brings up many great points that nearly brought me to tears.

She explains what she goes through on a daily basis, and why she chooses to fight her illness until the very end—when God decides.

This most beautiful quote sums up her message, “Suffering is not the absence of goodness, it is not the absence of beauty, but perhaps it can be the place where true beauty can be known.” Meaning that dying due to suffering is a much more dignified way to pass on into the next life.

She also talks about the oaths that all doctors make once they actually graduate medical school by saying:
“The doctor that prescribed you that pill you carry with you that will hasten your last breath has walked away from the Hippocratic oath that says, ‘first, do no harm.’ He or she has walked away from the oath that has protected life and the beautiful dying we are granted. The doctors agreeing to such medicine are walking away from the beautiful protection of the Hippocratic oath.”

Dying and suffering of a terminal illness really hits home for me.

Watching my father die of stage 4 esophageal cancer at age 50 last year was one of the hardest things I have ever had to go through, especially because my dad was extremely present in my life. He was there for all of my dance recitals, plays and graduations. He was my best friend who took me to concerts, water parks and would not rat me out when he knew I came in later than my curfew.

The pain that he endured in the short five months between diagnosis and death was unimaginable. He cried daily because he did not want to die, nor did he want to die with so much pain. Of course, it is a very scary thought to die from an illness literally taking over your body slowly but surely.

When he passed, he passed with comfort and healing due to the amazing hospice services that he and my family received. The thing that keeps me from losing my mind when I miss him so much is the fact that I know that he died with the utmost of dignity and courage.

Maynard is set to take the medication on Nov. 1. I wish her family great healing and for her to be at the utmost of peace if and when she decides to take her own life.