Terminally ill woman may postpone taking her life

PORTLAND, Ore. - Brittany Maynard, the terminally ill woman who expects to take her own life under Oregon's assisted-suicide law, says she is feeling well enough to possibly postpone the day she had planned to die.

Brittany Maynard said in early October she expected to kill herself Saturday, less than three weeks before her 30th birthday. She emphasized that she wasn't suicidal but wanted to die on her own terms and reserved the right to move the date forward or push it back.

While she hasn't completely ruled Saturday out, Maynard says in a new video she feels she has some more of her life to live.

"I still feel good enough, and I still have enough joy - and I still laugh and smile with my friends and my family enough - that it doesn't seem like the right time right now," she says in the video.

Maynard said she was diagnosed with incurable brain cancer earlier this year. Because her home state of California does not have an aid-in-dying law, she moved to Portland and has become an advocate for getting such laws passed in other states.

Oregon voters approved the Death With Dignity Act in 1994, then reaffirmed it - 60 percent to 40 percent - in 1997. It took more than a decade for another state to join Oregon, but four - Washington, Vermont, New Mexico, and Montana - now have such laws.