Healthcare Advocacy Group Launches ‘Day of the Dead’ Video to Honor Late Advocates for Medical Aid in Dying to Commemorate 6th Anniversary of Brittany Maynard’s Death

Supporters Make Impassioned Plea to Legislators to Pass End-of-Life Options Laws

Nov 2, 2020 Day of the Dead

In honor of Day of the Dead on Nov. 1-2, Compassion & Choices today launched a video of deceased advocates for expanding end-of-life care options urging legislators to support medical aid-in-dying laws. Medical aid-in-dying laws give mentally capable, terminally ill adults with six months or fewer to live the option to get a doctor’s prescription for medication they can decide to take to die peacefully if their suffering becomes unbearable. Watch the video here.

Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos) is a Mexican holiday celebrated on the first and second days of November. It is a time when families celebrate the lives of loved ones who have died by honoring them with beautiful gifts, colorful altars and visits to their graves. The celebration is  designed to embrace death as a part of the human experience in a vibrant and festive way. It is also a great opportunity to talk about the importance of communicating with our doctors and loved ones about what healthcare options we want at the end of our life, especially if we become too sick to speak for ourselves.

“People shouldn't have to unnecessarily suffer,” Compassion & Choices President and CEO Kim Callinan says in the video. “Somebody shouldn't have to pick up their family and move cross country in order to access a law. That's a health equity issue.”

For the last four years, Compassion & Choices has honored the memory of advocates for expanding end-of-life care options whose last wish in life was to die peacefully if their suffering becomes unbearable. The organization has honored their memory in beautiful celebrations throughout the country by highlighting the importance of their end-of-life care planning. This year, in light of the global pandemic, supporters are remembered in a different way: with a collection of videos and photos in their memory.

The release of the video comes just two months before state lawmakers start to launch 2021 legislative sessions in January and six years since the death of Brittany Maynard, the California woman who moved to Oregon in 2014 so she could die peacefully when she could no longer tolerate the suffering caused by a terminal brain tumor. Brittany inspired the passage of medical aid-in-dying laws since her death on Nov. 1, 2014, in Washington, D.C., and five states, California, Colorado, Hawaii, and New Jersey.

“I can’t even tell you the amount of relief that it provides me to know that I don’t have to die the way that it’s been described to me, that my brain tumor would take me on its own,” Brittany says in the video.

Miguel Carrasquillo, a native Puerto Rican, who lived in New York and Chicago was only 35 when he died from an aggressive and deadly brain tumor. Miguel, who referred to himself as the Latino Brittany Maynard, suffered horribly before his death in 2016. Miguel and Brittany had the same type of brain cancer.

“I'm the one who suffers every single day,” Miguel says in the video. “Headaches, back pains, electric shock all over your body, convulsions, seizures. I tell God that I need to go right now. I want the option to choose how I want to die.”

Amanda Villegas recalled the death of her late husband, Chris Davis, who suffered before he died of cancer in 2019, despite the fact that medical aid in dying is authorized in California.

“It was just inhumane the way we had to watch him die and the way he was mistreated,” she says in the video.

Fay Hoh Yin, an 87-year-old Brooklyn resident, who died of incurable T-cell lymphoma in July used her last months to advocate for the passage of the Medical Aid in Dying Act in New York.

“Most of us who are sick, do not want to die,” Fay said in the video. “We want to live.”

Michael Saum, the first known transgender person to publicly advocate for medical aid-in-dying laws nationwide, died alone in a rehabilitation center in Southern California this year.

“I am in constant pain,” he says in the video. “I have severe headaches.”

Irisaida ‘Isa’ Mendez, a Florida advocate living with incurable cancer spoke about the importance of planning for the end of life.

“Let’s plan our life like the way you plan our wedding. You plan your birth, you plan your death,” she says in the video. “Don't be afraid of talking about it, don't be afraid of facing it.”

Bill Johnson, former Secretary of the New Mexico Human Services Department died in 2019 from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS.) Bill recorded his video as legislators in New Mexico considered the Elizabeth Whitefield End of Life Options Act. The bill did not pass during the 2019 New Mexico legislative session. Bill would have turned 85 on October 29.

“If I had just one minute to speak with the legislature, I would try to help them understand there has to be a solution to this prolonged disease that is so, so terrible,” he states in the Day of Dead commemorative video.

Currently, medical aid in dying is authorized in Washington. D.C. and nine states: California, Colorado, Hawai‘i, Maine, Montana (via state Supreme Court ruling), New Jersey,  Oregon, Vermont, and Washington. Collectively, these 10 jurisdictions represent more than one-fifth of the nation’s population (22%) and 30 percent of the Latino population.