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About Compassion & Choices

What is Compassion & Choices?
Compassion & Choices is the oldest, largest and most comprehensive choice-in-dying organization in the United States. We are a nonprofit organization supported by memberships and donations. Compassion & Choices was formed by the unification of Compassion in Dying and End-of-Life Choices (formerly the Hemlock Society).

What does Compassion & Choices do?
Compassion & Choices supports, educates and advocates for choice and care at the end of life. We are committed to maximizing the options for a good death, including improving pain and palliative care, enforcing living wills and advance directives, and legalizing aid in dying.

How big is Compassion & Choices?
Our members and supporters currently number more than 50,000, and our issue has an even wider appeal. Polls show that 70 percent of Americans support choice in dying.

Does Compassion & Choices support suicide?
No. Suicide is never a good solution to a problem. We believe that only people with terminal conditions that severely impair the quality of life should be able to end their suffering through legal aid in dying.

Does Compassion & Choices support "suicide doctors" like Jack Kevorkian?
Dr. Kevorkian played a major role in bringing end-of-life issues to the attention of the American public. However, it is safer for both patient and physician to stay within the law when considering end-of-life options.

Do the services of the End-of-Life Consultation Program cost anything?
All services of the End-of-Life Consultation Program are provided free of charge.

Will the End-of-Life Consultation Program help someone die?
Compassion & Choices does not provide the means to hasten death, nor do we administer the means. We offer information, support and a presence at the death of a qualified client.

About the aid-in-dying movement

Why are some people opposed to aid in dying?
The primary opposition to the idea that terminally ill, mentally competent adults should be able to choose to hasten death with medical assistance often comes from religious sources, primarily the Catholic hierarchy and, more recently, the right-to-life movement. Compassion & Choices respects those beliefs, but we also know that individual citizens are entitled to decide these beliefs for themselves.

What about the "slippery slope" argument?
The slippery slope argument hypothesizes that legal aid in dying will lead to forced euthanasia. Slippery slopes are precarious situations in which one action leads to a chain of undesirable events. This does not define aid in dying, which is always dependent upon one individual. We recognize that any law is subject to abuse, which is why the Oregon law and proposed legislation have built-in safeguards.

Is the aid-in-dying movement partly driven by the financial burdens of the nation's health care system?
No. There are very little, if any, cost savings associated with aid in dying, since it occurs at a point when all but palliative treatment has already ceased.

Have a question that the End-of-Life Consultation Program that wasn’t answered on our Web site? Please email us or call 800.247.7421.