A 'WeLuvBrittany' Facebook page has been set up by a priest moved to do something by the story of terminal cancer sufferer Brittany Maynard.
Reverend 'Father Tony' Medeiros, of the Redemptoris Mater Seminary, in the Boston area, created the page after hearing the story of how Maynard plans to end her life in an assisted suicide on November 1 following her heartbreaking diagnosis in January this year.
Maynard, 29, has spoken of her decision to set the date for her death in a video that has gone viral.
In the video posted to YouTube, she explained that she will die upstairs in her bedroom, with her husband, parents and a few other close people by her side.
"I can't even tell you the amount of relief that it provides me to know that I don't have to do the way that it's been described to me, that my brain tumour would take me on its own," she said.
She has since said that she doesn't actually want to die and that people should not judge her "until anyone has walked a mile in my shoes and knows what they're facing and has felt the like, just bone-splitting headaches that I get sometimes, or the seizures, or the inability to speak, or the moments where I'm looking at my husband's face and I can't think of his name".
Father Tony has said he does not want the Facebook page to be a place where people discuss their thoughts on physician-assisted suicide, or "get preachy" and cast judgement on Maynard's decision, The Inquisitr reports.
Instead, he said he wanted people to see Brittany as "their wife, their daughter, their sister, their friend".
"In a very fundamental way, I think she's challenging each one of us to confront the question, are you praying for me, or yourself?" he said.
He said her story had "struck a chord" in him and he set up the page because he wanted Maynard to know that she was "not alone, that there were so many, many people praying for her, holding her in their hearts".
The initiative has the support of the Catholic Archbishop of Boston, Sean O'Malley, who said on his blog that Maynard's story had "touched everyone's hearts".
"We want to hold her up in our prayers and encourage people to pray for her and to send messages of support so that she realises that she is not alone in her suffering and hopefully will come to see that ending her life is not the solution," he said.
Also praying for her is Kara Tippetts, a Christian who is also dying of brain cancer, but who has chosen to die naturally.
In an open letter to Maynard, she described praying for her together with a friend and her five-year-old daughter.
She spoke movingly of knowing what it is like to be in a place where the "horizon of your days that once felt limitless now feels to be dimming".
Tippetts, who has been fighting cancer for two years and has not been given long to live, pleaded with Maynard to change her mind about going through with the assisted suicide, and instead live out her days, in spite of the difficulties her cancer diagnosis will bring.
"We see you, we see your life, and there are countless lovers of your heart that are praying you would change your mind," she wrote.
"Brittany, I love you, and I'm sorry you are dying. I am sorry that we are both being asked to walk a road that feels simply impossible to walk."
However, she encouraged Maynard to see her suffering in a new light.
"Suffering is not the absence of goodness, it is not the absence of beauty, but perhaps it can be the place where true beauty can be known," said Tippetts.
"In your choosing your own death, you are robbing those that love you with the such tenderness, the opportunity of meeting you in your last moments and extending you love in your last breaths.
"That last kiss, that last warm touch, that last breath, matters — but it was never intended for us to decide when that last breath is breathed."
She went on to invite Maynard to put her trust in Jesus and refuse the "horrible lie that your dying will not be beautiful, that the suffering will be too great".
"Knowing Jesus, knowing that He understands my hard goodbye, He walks with me in my dying. My heart longs for you to know Him in your dying. Because in His dying, He protected my living. My living beyond this place," she said.
"Because in His dying, He protected my living. My living beyond this place.
"Brittany, when we trust Jesus to be the carrier, protecter, redeemer of our hearts, death is no longer dying. My heart longs for you to know this truth, this love, this forever living."
Joni Eareckson Tada, a Christian quadriplegic and breast cancer survivor, has also appealed to Maynard not to take the drugs that will end her life.
In a statement, she expressed her sympathy for Maynard and the pain she is experiencing as a result of her terminal illness.
However, she said that if she could park her wheelchair beside her, she would tell her how "the love of Jesus has sustained me through my chronic pain, quadriplegia and cancer".
"I don't want her to wake up on the other side of her tombstone only to face a dark, grim existence without life and joy; that is, without God," she said.
"There's only one person who has transformed the landscape of life-after-death, and that is Jesus, the One who conquered the grave, opening the path to life eternal. Three grams of phenobarbital in the veins will only provide a temporary reprieve. It is not the answer for the most important passage of her life."
She concluded: "The hours are ticking away; please, Brittany, open your heart to the only One who can do something about your pain and your death. Life is the most irreplaceable and fundamental condition of the human experience, and I implore you to take a long, hard look at the consequences of your decision which is so fatal, and worst of all, so final."
