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Afterlife Advocacy: New Brittany Maynard Video Calls For Action

Aid-in-dying advocates released a new video Wednesday showing Brittany Maynard urging more Americans to join the movement.
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On what would have been Brittany Maynard’s 30th birthday Wednesday, aid-in-dying advocates released a new video containing never-seen footage in which the late newlywed urges Americans to join a campaign to pass death-with-dignity laws nationwide.

“I hope for the sake of other American citizens — all these people I’m speaking to that I’ve never met, that I'll never meet — that this choice be extended to you … That we mobilize. That we vocalize. That we start to talk about it,” Maynard says in the video, recorded Aug. 2. She ended her life Nov. 1.

“I’m coming to realize how much our culture fears death and shuns death, and how much of the medical community ... feels as though they almost view death as failure, which I understand except for not when you’re dealing with terminally patients,” she adds in the video. “… If I can play even the smallest part in helping to reduce fear or misunderstanding, then it’s worth speaking up for.”

Maynard’s website will serve as a hub for the grassroots campaign. Maynard had said she chose Nov. 1 to end her life with a lethal prescription to avoid the final stages of an aggressive, terminal brain tumor. Earlier this year, she and her family moved from the Bay Area to Portland, Oregon. In that state — as well as in Washington, Montana, Vermont and New Mexico — aid in dying is authorized.

In October, she launched public campaign via a video to help expand aid-in-dying rights to more Americans.

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