In posthumous video, Brittany Maynard calls for euthanasia law

A bill to legalize assisted suicide in California advanced out of committee Wednesday, aided by a new video featuring cancer victim Brittany Maynard, who killed herself with a physician-prescribed drug on Nov. 1.

After learning she had terminal brain cancer, Maynard moved from California to Oregon because assisted suicide is legal under certain conditions there.

“I am heartbroken that I had to leave behind my home, my community, and my friends in California, but I am dying and I refuse to lose my dignity,” Maynard said in the video recorded before her death. Before she died, Maynard partnered with Compassion & Choices to advocate for legalizing assisted suicide in other states. Five states—Oregon, Washington, Montana, New Mexico, and Vermont—allow doctors to assist terminally ill patients to end their own lives. At least 19 states have introduced legislation to legalize assisted suicide, according to Compassion & Choices.

The state Senate Health Committee passed the bill by a vote of 5-2, but it still must clear the Senate Judiciary Committee before it comes to a full vote. It faces opposition from medical and religious groups who say assisted suicide goes against a doctor’s duty to do no harm and violates the sanctity of life.

The hearing in California came just days after the death of Kara Tippetts, a Christian cancer patient who publicly pleaded with Maynard not to kill herself. Tippetts wrote a letter to Maynard that focused on the nature of suffering and grace: “I am sorry that we are both being asked to walk a road that feels simply impossible to walk. … Dear heart, we simply disagree. Suffering is not the absence of goodness, it is not the absence of beauty, but perhaps it can be the place where true beauty can be known.”

Tippetts went on hospice care in December and chronicled her final days on the blog Mundane Faithfulness.

The deaths of both Maynard and Tippetts have made assisted suicide a hot-button issue for public debate. But at the hearing in California, Dr. Warren Fong, an oncologist and president of the Medical Oncology Association of Southern California, urged lawmakers to look deeper than the public’s opinion.

“Do not mistake temporary popularity with wisdom,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.