Brittany Maynard, US cancer sufferer and right-to-die campaigner, ends life
A young American woman with terminal cancer has committed suicide, following promises to do so that had triggered shock and controversy over the right to die.
A young American woman with terminal cancer has committed suicide, following promises to do so that had triggered shock and controversy over the right to die.
Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old brain cancer sufferer, made headlines last month when a video of her making her suicide threat went viral and was seen by millions of web users.
Sean Crowley, spokesman for Compassion & Choices, an end-of-life activist group that supported Maynard, said she had died peacefully in her home on Saturday."We will work to carry on her legacy of bringing end-of-life choice to all Americans," the organisation's president, Barbara Coombs Lee, said.
In January, Maynard was given six months to live and told her death would be painful because of the aggressive nature of her cancer.
Maynard and her husband, who had just married when she began having severe headaches, moved from their home in California to Oregon, one of a handful of US states with a "right-to-die" law. A doctor was then able to prescribe her the medication she needed to end her own life, surrounded by her family in the bedroom she shared with her husband.