Terminally ill woman Brittany Maynard, advocate of death with dignity laws, has ended her life
Brittany Maynard, who announced she would end her life on Nov. 1 after being diagnosed with stage 4 glioblastoma, died Saturday. She was 29.
Maynard moved to Portland, Oregon, with her husband, mother, and stepfather in June, and in early October went public with her plan to die under Oregon's Death with Dignity Act. She was prescribed a fatal dose of barbiturates by a doctor, and said she would take them when the pain became too much to bear, People reports.
"Goodbye to all my dear friends and family that I love," Maynard wrote on Facebook. "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."
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Maynard's doctors found a brain tumor in January, but after removing as much as they could, it grew back even bigger. Doctors gave her about six months to live, and after doing her own research, Maynard decided against undergoing chemotherapy or radiation. "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 my that wants to die. But I am dying."
Maynard is survived by her husband, Dan Diaz, mother Debbie Ziegler, and stepfather Gary Holmes.
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Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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