Brittany was an American woman who had terminal cancer and had stated that she would end her own life "when the time seemed right." She was an advocate for the legalization of aid in dying. She was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer, on January 1, 2014, and had a partial craniotomy and a partial resection of her temporal lobe. The cancer returned in April 2014, and her diagnosis was then elevated to grade 4 glioblastoma, with a prognosis of six months to live. Maynard moved from California to Oregon to take advantage of Oregon's Death with Dignity Law, saying she had decided that "death with dignity was the best option for me and my family." She partnered with Compassion & Choices to create the Brittany Maynard Fund, which seeks to legalize aid in dying in states where it is now illegal. She also wrote a piece for CNN titled "My Right to Death with Dignity at 29". Maynard had planned to end her life on November 1, 2014, with drugs prescribed by her doctor. On October 29, 2014, she stated that "it doesn't seem like the right time right now" but that she would still end her own life at some future point. Marcia Angell, the former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, wrote that Maynard is a "new face" of the assisted dying movement who has "greatly helped future patients who want the same choice." Maynard's activism has been a strong focus of Connecticuit's proposed aid in dying legislation. In October 2014 she checked the last item off her bucket list by visiting the Grand Canyon. Aside from her husband, she is survived by her mother, Deborah Ziegler and step-father Gary Holmes. It was reported on November 2, 2014 by People and various other media sources that Maynard had ended her life on November 1 surrounded by her loved ones. "Goodbye to all my dear friends and family that I love. Today is the day I have chosen to pass away with dignity in the face of my terminal illness, this terrible brain cancer that has taken so much from me ... but would have taken so much more," Maynard wrote in her final Facebook post.∼She was initially diagnosed in January 2014 with a grade 2 brain cancer and underwent surgery. By April 2014, the cancer returned as terminal, grade 4 cancer, with a prognosis of 6 months to live. She made this statement to a media outlet: "After months of research, my family and I reached a heartbreaking conclusion: There is no treatment that would save my life, and the recommended treatments would have destroyed the time I had left." She made the decision that she would end her own life rather than continue to deteriorate, moving from California, where it is not legal, to Oregon, where the "Death with Dignity Law" had been enacted.

She was survived by her husband, her mother, and her step-father.

On September 11, 2015, the state of California legislature passed Senate Bill (SB 128) "End of Life Option Act". A modified version of the bill was signed by Governor Jerry Brown on October 5, 2015, and was enacted into law in June 2016.