This new post by Charles Baron appears on the Health Affairs Blog, as part of a series stemming from the Third Annual Health Law Year in P/Review event held at Harvard Law School on Friday, January 30, 2015.
Brittany Maynard’s highly publicized decision to end her life under Oregon’s Death With Dignity law has given a new face to the American right to die movement. It is that of a young, attractive, athletic newlywed, who would not have considered herself as having a stake in the movement until the day she learned a brain tumor was the cause of her severe headaches. She was terminally ill and faced a future of six months of increasing pain, debilitation, and severe seizures before dying.
A video of Maynard’s story produced by the non-profit advocacy organization Compassion and Choices has reached many millions of viewers. Extended coverage of her decision-making process by People Magazine resulted in record numbers of hits to the publication’s website. During her illness, Maynard moved from California to Oregon and on November 1, 2014 took barbiturates to end her life. In her memory, her husband and mother have become prominent activists in the effort to legalize physician aid-in-dying (PAD). […]
See the full post here.
