FAQ
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 the nation's most prominent choice-in-dying organizations, Compassion In Dying and End-of-Life Choices.
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 improved pain and palliative care, enforcement of living wills and advance directives for health care, and legalization of 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 by hastening death.
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.
About the Client Support Program
What is the Client Support Program?
The Client Support Program serves individuals, families and others who may be facing the end of life or even just planning ahead. These confidential services include:
• Support and counsel to anyone who contacts us
• Local referrals to pain specialists, hospice programs, social service agencies, disease-specific support groups and others
• Assistance in completing living will/advance directive and in talking to families, friends and health care providers about health care wishes
• Advocacy for people in nursing homes or who are receiving inadequate care
Do the services of the Client Support Program cost anything?
All services of the Client Support Program are provided free of charge.
Will the Client Support 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.
What if someone who does not have a serious illness contacts the Client Support Program?
No one who contacts the Client Support Program is turned away. If the program is unable to serve someone's needs, that person will be appropriately referred, and the Client Support Program with work with them until the referral is in place.
About the choice in dying movement
Why are some people opposed to aid in dying?
The primary opposition to the idea that terminally ill, mentally competent people 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 that one step logically necessitates subsequent steps. This does not define aid in dying, which is always dependent upon one individual. That said, we recognize that any law is subject to abuse, which is why the Oregon law and other proposed legislation have built-in safeguards
Is the choice 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.
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