When Maynard learned she had a fatal disease that would rob her of control over her body and mind, she and her husband decided to move from California to Oregon — one of five states where she could legally obtain a prescription for a barbiturate to end her life peacefully before the cancer destroyed who she was. This was not a matter of choosing death over life. Indeed, Maynard and many other people prefer the term “assisted dying” to “assisted suicide.” Oregon’s Death With Dignity law applies only to patients who are close to death, and Maynard was told in April that she had six months to live. The question was simply how she would die.