Maynard Stands Firm, Scheduled to Die Saturday

WASHINGTON -- Brittany Maynard is a young newlywed making headlines for choosing to end her life on her own terms. Doctors diagnosed her with terminal brain cancer and gave her six months to live.

But she doesn't want to wait that long.

She shared her story with the "death with dignity" advocacy group Compassion and Choices.

"I plan to be surrounded by my husband and my mother and my best friend, who is also a physician. I will die upstairs, in my bedroom that I share with my husband," Maynard said, describing her planned death.

Maynard moved to Oregon to take advantage of the state's assisted suicide law.

Doctors there prescribed her with a life-ending medication she plans to take on Nov. 1.

Maynard's controversial decision landed her on the cover of People Magazine and in the center of a moral and ethical debate over assisted suicide.

Currently, five states allow patients the right to physician-assisted suicide. Opponents in both the medical field and the faith community want changes to the law.

Joni Eareckson-Tada, a quadriplegic and a breast cancer survivor, wrote an open letter to Maynard begging her to reconsider.

"I wrote that letter not so much to influence Brittany, which I hope it does, but to influence the thousands of others who now feel that physician-assisted suicide could very well be an option for them," Eareckson-Tada told CBN News.

Many in the medical community agree the so-called "death with dignity" law creates a slippery slope for physicians and patients. A recent poll by the New England Medical Journal says 67 percent of doctors remain opposed to assisted suicide.

Dr. David Prentice, with the Family Research Council, said laws like the one in Oregon can open the flood gates to larger ethical issues.

"For health professionals, these types of laws pervert the medical field. It takes that 'do no harm idea' and turns it upside down, where you are intentionally harming a patient and ending their life," Dr. Prentice said.

Maynard and other advocates of the law argue that it allows patients to maintain their dignity even in the face of a gruesome death. They also say the right to choose death can ease the financial burden of the medical bills for loved ones left behind.

Christian author Kara Tippetts disagrees. Tippetts, a terminally ill mother of four, said that by choosing assisted suicide Maynard may be doing her loved ones more harm than good.

In an open letter she writes, "In your choosing your own death, you are robbing those that love you with such tenderness, the opportunity of meeting you in your last moments and extending you love in your last breaths."

She explains to CBN News why she wrote the letter.

"I wanted her to know that her breath matters, that her life matters, that we see her and that she is important and that she's loved. That God loves her," Tippetts said.

Maynard stands by her decision and hopes it will build momentum to extend the law throughout the country. While she may be the new face of this debate, opponents say her story has reawakened the decades-old fight over the culture of life.