END OF LIFE - Should You Have the Right to Decide When You Die?

QUESTION:  Is what you do with your own life (live or die) a human right?

My answer is yes.  So government at any level should not interfere with your decision on when you want to die.

"Should terminally ill patients be able to choose when they die?" PBS NewsHour 10/14/2014

Excerpt

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  How we choose to deal with the end of life and the decisions patients and families face are difficult subjects that are often hard to discuss.  But there are moments when they capture headlines and spark a national conversation.

We have recently heard from a number of voices grappling with these tough questions.

Tonight, Jeffrey Brown looks at a high-profile case in the Northwest.

BRITTANY MAYNARD:  I can’t even tell you the amount of relief that it provides me to know that I don’t have to die the way that it’s been described to me that my brain tumor would take me on its own.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  Brittany Maynard’s video has thrust the issue of end of life decisions back into the national spotlight.

The 29-year-old has terminal brain cancer, and, last spring, doctors gave her six months to live.  Instead, she’s decided to die on her own terms, November 1.

BRITTANY MAYNARD:  I hope to enjoy however many days I have left.

JEFFREY BROWN:  And her online video has been viewed more than seven million times since last week.

BRITTANY MAYNARD:  I will die upstairs in my bedroom that I share with my husband, with my mother and my husband by my side, and pass peacefully with some music that I like in the background.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Maynard and her husband moved from California to Oregon to utilize the state’s death with dignity law.  It allows her to take lethal medication prescribed by a doctor.

The Oregon law, which calls this aid in dying, has been around since 1997, and since then, more than 750 people have used it to end their lives.  All told, only Oregon, Washington and Vermont have laws allowing the practice that’s sometimes referred to as doctor-assisted suicide.

Court decisions in Montana and New Mexico have also authorized it, but those rulings have not yet been codified into law.  The nonprofit group that posted Maynard’s video, Compassion & Choices, is working to expand the option of death with dignity in more states.

Maynard’s husband and other relatives also appear on the video supporting that right.