| Compassion & Choices | |
|---|---|
| Motto | Expanding choice and improving care at the end of life |
| Type | Legal and legislative advocacy, counseling |
| Headquarters | Denver, Colorado |
| Location | United States |
| Key people | Barbara Coombs Lee, Kathryn Tucker |
| Website | www.compassionandchoices.org |
Compassion & Choices (which was created by the merger of the Hemlock Society, briefly named End of Life Choices, with Compassion In Dying[1]) is a nonprofit organization in the United States working to improve patients' rights and choices at the end of life. Its primary though not sole function is advocacy for and ensuring access to assisted suicide[2][3]
With approximately 40,000 supporters and 60 chapters, it is the largest organization of its kind in the United States.
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Compassion & Choices operates the End-of-Life Consultation program, which provides counselors for terminally ill patients and their families at no cost. Professional counselors and trained volunteers work by phone or in person to offer assistance in completing advance directives living wills; referrals to local services, including hospice and illness-specific support groups; advice on adequate pain and symptom management; and information on safe, effective methods for aid in dying as an option of last resort.
Compassion & Choices' legal advocacy team, which litigates patient cases related to ensuring adequate end-of-life care and choice, represented 16 terminally ill patient-plaintiffs at the U.S. Supreme Court in Gonzales v. Oregon, defeating the Bush administration challenge to Oregon's Death with Dignity Act in January 2006.
Through litigation, Compassion & Choices works for terminally ill patients' rights to receive pain and symptom management, to voluntarily stop life-sustaining treatments, to request and receive palliative sedation, and to choose aid in dying under state and federal constitutional protections.
Compassion & Choices is the successor to the Hemlock Society,[4] founded by Derek Humphry in 1980; the original group was dedicated to "fighting for voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide to be made legal for terminally and hopelessly ill adults." Two choice-in-dying rights organizations emerged from the Hemlock Society, and were merged in 2005: Compassion in Dying and End-of-Life Choices The organization changed its name, according to Humphry, for reasons of "political correctness." Articles of Amendment were filed with the Colorado Secretary of State on October 29, 2004.[5]
Compassion & Choices Action Network is the legislative advocacy arm of Compassion & Choices. The Action Network seeks to pass Oregon-style aid-in-dying legislation throughout the United States; laws that strengthen advance directives; and laws that mandate palliative care training for health care providers.
The organization's work is at odds with the views of certain religious groups, notably the Roman Catholic Church. Fabian Bruskewitz, Bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska, pointed out in 1996 that members of the organization incur automatic excommunication,[6][7] a judgment that was appealed to, and upheld by, the Vatican[8][9] During a 2008 ballot initiative campaign that would legalize doctor-assisted suicide in Washington state, Compassion & Choices was accused by Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist John Connelly of engaging in "Catholic-baiting."[10] Despite all of this, 47% of Catholic voters in Washington voted to approve the Death With Dignity Act. [11]