The Pros And Cons Of The Death With Dignity Act

When faced with a terminal illness a person has to go through a process of thinking. What will happen to me? How long will I suffer? What kind of financial burden am I going to leave with my family when I am gone? What are my options? For many years the only legal options were to try a treatment plan, palliative care, hospice, and eventually death. For residents of Washington State, Oregon, and Vermont there is another option. They have the option to end their own life with a prescription from their physicians.
The Death with Dignity Act was approved by voters in Oregon in 1994 and was confirmed in 1997 when the law went into effect. It is a law that allows mentally competent, terminally-ill adults to voluntarily request a prescription medication

She was a 29 year old newlywed with a terminal brain tumor that lived in California. After learning about her tumor she had several procedures done to attempt to stop the progression of the growth of the tumor. Unfortunately, not only did the tumor not slow down, it actually became more aggressive. The doctors gave Brittany six months to live. The doctors presented her with options of treatment where the hair of her scalp would be singed off and her head left with first-degree burns, among others. She had to weigh her options and determine her quality of life. Her and her husband came to the difficult conclusion that there was no treatment that would save her life and all the treatments that were suggested to her would destroy the quality of the time she had left. She did not want to put her family through the nightmare of watching her decline and suffer on hospice and so she decided that death with dignity is what she wanted to

In many interviews she explained how she was not suicidal, but wanted to end her life on her own terms. She stated: “I would not tell anyone else that he or she should choose death with dignity. My question is: Who has the right to tell me that I don’t deserve this choice?” (CNN, 2014). She felt that she didn’t want to put her family through physical and emotional pain and that she thought it was her right to make that choice for herself. She said once she had the prescription in her hands that she had felt a tremendous sense of relief (CNN, 2014). She stated that she felt in control and that she could move forward in her remaining days and enjoy her family knowing that she had a safety net (CNN, 2014). Brittany Maynard ended her life on November 1, 2014 by taking the prescribed medication for assisted