Six months to live, terminally ill, suffering with discomfort day in and day out.

If given the choice to have pills in your possession that would allow you to take your own life instead of suffering, would you use them? Until recently, many people have never heard of such a thing.

Brittany Maynard, activist for “Death with Dignity” and diagnosed with deadly brain tumor, performed such an act.

I can see both sides of this issue.

People that perform these acts are dying; they take the pills when there is nothing left in them.

Maynard specifically said that she would only take the pills when she was ready, when she was no longer joyful.  She wanted to die with her loved ones around her.

It makes sense.  I wouldn’t want to see my mom or my best friend struggling to do things like swallow food and breathe; at that time, it would make sense to have a plan to take these lethal pills.

Yet, the optimist in me says a miracle could have happened, to never give up hope.

These pills are similar to those that would be given to an old pet that is struggling to go about everyday life.  The consumer of the pills falls asleep and dies a peaceful death.

Maynard was given six months to live; it was concluded that there was no way to beat the cancer that had taken over her brain.

She and her husband picked up their lives in California and moved to Oregon, one of five states that authorize death with dignity.

This action created controversy, comparing Maynard’s issue to suicide.

According to a column published on CNN that Maynard wrote before she passed, she stated that she wasn’t suicidal; she didn’t want to die.

However, she was dying and she wished to die on her own terms.

I don’t think that Maynard was suicidal.

She knew that she was dying from cancer; she didn’t wish to die from cancer, so she did something about it.

Maynard also stated that because she is young, only 29, while the cancer was destroying her brain, her body was likely to hold on for a long time.

To me, Maynard knew what she wanted and what she was doing.  She wasn’t taking lethal pills just to get it over with.

She took them when she knew she had no hope left, and to me that is respectable

The Death with Dignity Act should not be illegal; terminally ill people should be given access to these pills.

There should be no law denying such pills.