After 29-year-old Brittany Maynard took her life Saturday with a lethal pill prescribed by a doctor, she reignited a national debate about the right of terminally ill patients to end their own lives.
Maynard and her husband Dan Diaz moved from their home in California to Oregon when they learned Maynard would only have a few months to live. Oregon approved a law in 1994 that allows physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients - the first sate in America to approve such a law, reports The Associated Press.
While the discussion of physician-assisted suicide is not new, the discussion is being brought to a younger generation for the first time.
In Oregon from the time the law was passed in 1994 through Dec. 2013, the median age of a patient to take advantage of the physician-assisted suicide law was 71 years old, reports AP.
More than 750 people have taken advantage of this law since it was passed, but only six were younger than 35, reports AP.
Maynard gained supporters - she even made it onto the cover of People magazine in October - but as with any controversial decision, she had her critics.
The harshest critics came from various religious backgrounds who say that God is the only one who should have the power to determine when a life should end.
"I'm troubled by how easily we assume - in this culture that looks for salvation from the limits of the human body in punishing exercise, restrictive diets, and ever-more-sophisticated medical technology -that life in an impaired body is not worth living," Ellen Painter Dollar writes in an opinion piece on Patheos.
"I would never try to convince Brittany Maynard, who has made a decision according to her conscience, the laws of her state, and whatever faith she may or may not have, that she should change her mind based on what I believe. I don't think I could, anyway," she continues. "But I will try to convince my fellow Christians that we have something better than assisted suicide to offer those who naturally fear the pain, mess, dependence, and fear of an inevitable painful death."
