Browsing by Subject "assisted dying"

Physician-assisted dying in the United States, where a terminally ill person that fulfils certain criteria can be prescribed a substance to end their life, is legal in eight states as well as in Washington D.C. Advocacy organizations have played a central role in getting legislation passed. The state of Oregon, where the practice has been legal for over 20 years, serves as a model for legislation that is being proposed in other states. The advocacy organization Compassion & Choices, based in Portland, Oregon has been central in framing the issue of assisted dying in the United States. In 2014, Compassion & Choices released a video featuring the story of a young woman named Brittany Maynard who was dying of brain cancer. The video went viral and was viewed over 9 million times in the month after being released, making Maynard the face of assisted dying in the United States. In this thesis I examine her story through narrative analysis as it is told in the campaign video and in three other videos released after the first one. Two of the videos in the material were released after Maynard’s death and in them the story is told by Maynard’s husband Dan Diaz, who has actively continued campaigning for assisted dying. The aim of this thesis is to examine how advocacy organizations such as Compassion & Choices use personal stories to get attention for their cause and try to influence policy. The content of Maynard’s personal story, how it is told, and how the story is connected to arguments for assisted dying is analyzed through narrative methods. The results show that family values and an active lifestyle are emphasized in the narrative. The story alternates between statements presented as facts and personal experiences that are more emotional. The main arguments for legalization that are made in the videos are related to autonomy and personal choice and to avoiding unnecessary suffering. The personal experiences of Maynard are related to these arguments through how the story is told through speech, text and pictures. Strategies to frame the policy issue in a certain way and get the audience to identify with Maynard are also employed.