California Woman wants to End Her Life through Right to Die

Christy O'Donnell is fighting for right to die as she doesn’t want to spend her last days in agony and fearing a painful death. She is suffering from terminal lung cancer and is of the belief that her death would come in the form of her left lung filling with fluid.

“If I get to a hospital, they'll very painfully put a tube in. They’ll drain the fluid from my lung, only to patch me up, send me home and wait until the next time my lung fills up with fluid. And they'll continue to repeat that process and drowning painfully until I die”, she said in a YouTube video posted this week by Compassion and Choices, the nonprofit aid-in-dying group that Brittany Maynard worked with before ending her life last fall.

O'Donnell, a 46-year-old single mother from Santa Clarita, California, is following the footsteps of Maynard, 29, who became the face of death-with-dignity laws after moving from California to Oregon after diagnosis of a terminal brain cancer. Moving to California cleared the way for her to legally end her life with a medication prescribed by a doctor.

The same is the case with O'Donnell as she is also fighting for the right to die on her own terms. Although a right-to-die bill is being discussed to make it a law in California, but it might be too late in the case of O'Donnell, which is leading her to fight for the right to end her life.

Those opposing the right-to-die bill are saying that impact of assisted suicide on broader society needs to be considered in detail. It is very important to see how it affects the most vulnerable, without economic means or health access, as well as people hit by serious disabilities, said Californians Against Assisted Suicide spokeswoman Marilyn Golden, a senior policy analyst for the Disability Rights Educational and Defense Fund. Her statement was a response to O'Donnell's suit.