Woman Exercises Her Right to Die

Woman exercises her right-to-die and takes her own life surrounded by her family.
Brittany Maynard, the American who became the public face of the controversial right-to-die movement over the last few weeks, ended her own life Saturday at her home in Portland, Oregon. She was 29.

""Goodbye to all my dear friends and family that I love. 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,"" she wrote on Facebook. ""The world is a beautiful place, travel has been my greatest teacher, my close friends and folks are the greatest givers. I even have a ring of support around my bed as I type ... Goodbye world. Spread good energy. Pay it forward!""

Doctors told Maynard she had six months to live last spring after she was diagnosed with a likely stage 4 glioblastoma. She made headlines around the world when she announced she intended to die - under Oregon's Death with Dignity Act - by taking a fatal dose of barbiturates, prescribed to her by a doctor, when her suffering became too great.brittany-maynard 2

""My glioblastoma is going to kill me and that's out of my control,"" she told PEOPLE last month. ""I've discussed with many experts how I would die from it and it's a terrible, terrible way to die. So being able to choose to go with dignity is less terrifying.""

On Oct. 6, she launched an online video campaign with Compassion & Choices, an end-of-life choice advocacy organization, to fight for expanding death with dignity laws nationwide.

""For people to argue against this choice for sick people really seems evil to me,"" she told PEOPLE. ""They try to mix it up with suicide and that's really unfair, because there's not a single part of me that wants to die. But I am dying."" A Heartbreaking Choice Arriving at her decision was a gradual one, she said.


""It's not a decision you make one day and you snap your fingers,"" she told PEOPLE.

She said she began thinking about death with dignity in January - when she was first diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor - after coming across an article on it while researching possible treatments.

""Really, from the beginning, all the doctors said when you have a glioma you're going to die,"" she told PEOPLE. ""You can just Google it. People don't survive this disease. Not yet.""

Doctors removed as much of the tumor as they could, but it came back larger than ever two months later, she said.

After researching her options, she decided not to try chemotherapy or radiation.

""They didn't seem to make sense for me,"" she said, because of ""the level of side effects I would suffer and it wouldn't save my life. I've been told pretty much no matter what, I'm going to die - and treatments would extend my life but affect the quality pretty negatively.""

In June, she moved to Oregon with her husband, Dan Diaz, 43, her mother, Debbie Ziegler, 56 , and her stepfather, Gary Holmes, 72, so she could have access to the state's Death with Dignity Act, which allows physicians to prescribe life-ending medication to certain terminally ill patients.

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