Life After Being Diagnosed With Brain Cancer Essay

2005 Words9 Pages
In 2014, the American public was captivated by the story of a young woman who decided to end her life after being diagnosed with brain cancer. Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old woman who had just been married, had been having splitting headaches. She went to the doctor and was diagnosed with a tumor. Her life became a blur of hospital visits, treatment plans, and research into what she could do. Her doctors came to the conclusion that there was no treatment that could save Maynard’s life. According to an opinion piece that Maynard wrote for CNN, she “quickly decided that death with dignity was the best option for [her] and [her] family” (Maynard). Since she lived in Oregon, the idea of dying on an individual’s terms was acceptable and legal, because of the Oregon Death with Dignity Act. Maynard died on Saturday, November 1, 2014. Physician-assisted suicide is defined as “a physician intentionally helping a person to terminate his or her life by providing drugs for self-administration, at that person’s voluntary and competent request” (Radbruch et al. 109). There is a large controversy over whether or not a patient should be allowed to request and perform physician-assisted suicide; doctors and patients alike have mixed feelings on the issue. The first democratic nation to recognize the legality of physician-assisted suicide was Australia. They enacted a law that described certain conditions where the act was legal in the Rights of the Terminally Ill Amendment Act in 1996.
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