Etheridge says Jolie's mastectomy was a 'fearful choice'

LOS ANGELES, June 18 (UPI) -- U.S. singer and breast cancer survivor Melissa Etheridge says Angelina Jolie's decision to have a preventative double mastectomy was a "fearful choice."

The 37-year-old actress and mother of six children chronicled in a May op-ed piece for The New York Times her decision to have the preventative operations after she learned she carried a gene that predisposed her to breast and ovarian cancers.

Jolie's mother died of ovarian cancer in 2007 at the age of 56. The actress' maternal aunt died of breast cancer at 61 late last month.

In a recent interview with the Washington Blade, Etheridge described Jolie's decision to have the operations "the most fearful choice you can make when confronting anything with cancer ..."

"Plenty of people have the gene mutation and everything, but it never comes to cancer, so I would say to anybody faced with that, that choice is way down the line on the spectrum of what you can do and to really consider the advancements we've made in things like nutrition and stress levels. I've been cancer-free for nine years now and looking back, I completely understand why I got cancer. There was so much acidity in everything," Etheridge said. "I really encourage people to go a lot longer and further before coming to that conclusion."