Terminally ill mother sues California for right to die on her own terms

SAN DIEGO COUNTY, Calif. -- A terminally ill single mother is among three plaintiffs suing the state of California for the right to end their lives on their own terms.

KTLA reports the lawsuit, filed Friday in California Superior Court, asserts that the state's constitution and current laws should allow mentally competent adults to request medication to help them die "painlessly and peacefully."

A non-profit organization that aims to expand choice at the end of life called Compassion & Choices released a video about Christy O'Donnell. She is a 46-year-old Republican civil rights attorney and former sergeant with the Los Angeles Police Department, and she was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer last year.

O'Donnell said she's lived a healthy life and has never smoked a cigarette.

“I’ve lived 10 people’s lives in my 46 years. I’ve had the joy of motherhood, which has been the greatest love of my life,” she said. “So, because of that, I’m not afraid to die. But not being afraid to die is not the same as wanting to die. I don’t want to die.”

She has received chemotherapy for nine months, but doctors said the cancer metastasized to her brain, spine, ribs and liver. Doctors have told O'Donnell that her death will be slow and painful.

“The most likely way that I’m going to die with the lung cancer is that my left lung will fill with fluid, I’ll start drowning in my own fluid,” O’Donnell said in the video.

Doctors expect she has about six months to live, but she wants a choice.

“With a physician-aided death, I would have the choice to seek out and ask a doctor for a prescription, I choose whether to fill the prescription, I choose whether or not to take the prescription, and I choose when to do it, I choose where to do it and with whom to do it,” she said.

O’Donnell hopes the lawsuit will pave the way for terminally ill adults across the U.S.

Washington already has a death with dignity law.

According to the non-profit organization, the two other plaintiffs are Elizabeth Wallner of Sacramento, who has stage IV colon cancer, and Ventura resident Wolf Breiman, who has an incurable cancer of the white blood cells called multiple myeloma.