Brittany Maynard is leaving her exit door open just a crack, allowing that she may live beyond Saturday — if she still has joy, laughter and autonomy, she said in a video released Wednesday night.
Now the cover girl of a resurgent “death with dignity” movement, Maynard, 29, planned to end her life Nov. 1 with a lethal prescription to spare herself and her family from the end stages of her terminal brain cancer. In April, she learned she had six months to live.
“If Nov. 2 has come along and I’ve passed, I hope my family is still proud of me and the choices I made,” Maynard says in the video, released by Compassion & Choices, a nonprofit working to expand end-of-life options. “And if Nov. 2 comes along and I’m still alive, I know that we’ll just still be moving forward as a family out of love for each other, and that the decision will come later.”
Living in Portland, Oregon where aid-in-dying is legal, Maynard says she hopes her husband, Dan Diaz, eventually becomes a father and does not “live out the rest of his life just missing his wife.”
IN-DEPTH:
- Why Newlywed Brittany Maynard Is Ending Her Life in Three Weeks
- Bioethicist: Why Brittany Maynard Changes the Right-to-Die Debate
- Brittany Maynard Slams Doctor's Remarks on Her Decision to Die
