NEWBURYPORT Mass. — Barbara Mancini, an ER nurse featured on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” endured a year-long nightmare after being indicted for allegedly assisting her terminally ill father to die by self-euthanasia — the practice of ending one’s life by lethal injection or the suspension of medical treatment.

“Instead of having the peaceful and dignified death that he had hoped for, he died after prolonged suffering, and being subjected exactly to the medical treatments he specified in his written advanced directives that he never wanted,” Mancini said.

Charges were eventually dropped, but she has made it her mission to share her story and garner support for “Death with Dignity” legislation, now pending in the Massachusetts Legislature, along with 26 other states considering the “Death with Dignity” act.

Mancini shared her story with about 30 people Sunday afternoon at the First Religious Society, Unitarian Universalist in the coastal Massachusetts town of Newburyport, bringing several to tears as she told the details about the pain and suffering her father endured, against his wishes, in his final days.

The “Death with Dignity” act is a controversial law that allows for legal self-euthanasia for mentally competent, terminally-ill adults. It is currently legal in just five states: California, Oregon, Washington, Vermont, and Montana. In those states, patients can request to receive a prescription medication to speed up their deaths. The majority of the opposition to the law is based in religion; some faiths believe that assisted suicide is wrong. Some doctors are also against the bill for moral reasons.

This isn’t the first time the Death with Dignity Act has sparked controversy. It has been almost a year since the highly publicized death of Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old woman terminally ill with brain cancer who moved to Oregon with her family so that she could self-euthanize. He family helped to pass a “Death with Dignity Act” in her home state of California after Maynard’s death.

However, not all terminally ill patients shared the same view as Maynard or Mancini.Kara Tippetts, a Colorado mother of four with returning breast cancer, wrote an open letter to Maynard in October, urging her to change her mind. Tippetts’ blog post was entitled “Dear Brittany: Why We Don’t Have To Be So Afraid of Dying & Suffering That We Choose Suicide.”

For some terminally ill, suffering isn’t the answer. Mancini wanted to honor her father Joe Yourshaw’s wish. Yourshaw was having severe pain and asked Mancini to hand him his bottle of prescribed morphine. Before she could measure out the dose, he took what was left in the vial, Mancini said. When a hospice nurse arrived and Mancini told her what had happened, the nurse called 911 and insisted he be taken to the hospital to be treated for an overdose.

The police and hospice workers ignored Yourshaw’s written advanced directives — which stated he wanted no life-prolonging treatment, had a standing “do not resuscitate” order, and did not want to go to a hospital — and Yourshaw was hospitalized and treated in defiance of his end-of-life wishes, Mancini said.

Mancini was immediately arrested and charged with aiding an attempted suicide, a second-degree felony that carries up to 10 years in prison. Mancini, who was her father’s legal health care proxy, was told she no longer had any say in what happened to her father.

“It takes pressure because it’s social policy change,” Mancini said. “And, as I mentioned, there’s a lot of opposition to it.”

“As for my dad, he died a terrible death, needlessly and tragically. And I am always going to be haunted by that. I am speaking out to somehow make this right for him, my dad,” Mancini said. “I am also speaking out so that no other person will have to experience the same kind of ordeal.”

The Newburyport News in Newburyport, Massachusetts, contributed to this report.