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HALIFAX — Audrey Parker has decided to end her life on Thursday.

She has approached it as a political act — an important public statement about Canada’s relatively new assisted dying law.

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The 57-year-old Halifax woman says she is thankful the law will allow her to end the excruciating pain caused by cancerous tumours in her bones, but she says the legislation has left her in a terrible bind.

In recent weeks, the platinum-haired former ballroom dance instructor has spoken out — on social media, in newspapers, on TV — about how the two-year-old law is forcing her to choose to die sooner than she wants.

“You don’t want to die earlier than you have to,” she said in a recent interview in her Halifax apartment, where she has waged a very public campaign about a delicate subject that most would shy away from.

“There’s no reason I should have to die on Nov. 1 … I want to live as many days as I can.”

There's no reason I should have to die on Nov. 1 ... I want to live as many days as I can

The problem, Parker says, is that people seeking medical assistance in dying must meet a set of criteria that she says appear to make no sense.