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Online Resources
• About Us Do you have questions about estate planning? Planned giving? Your will? Each month, we feature new articles and interactive features that cover such topics. We hope it will be a useful resource for you:
On Aug. 17, 2006, President Bush signed into law new tax incentives for charitable gifts from donors who are 70.5 or older. The Pension Protection Act of 2006 encourages financial support of charitable organizations across the United States. Use a Life Income Gift to Care for Loved Ones A life income gift is a unique type of charitable donation that generates income for the donor. Payments, however, can be directed to beneficiaries of your choosing, such as elderly parents, siblings or other loved ones. What Records Should I Keep of My Charitable Transactions? To make sure your planned gift to us qualifies for a charitable deduction, you must maintain the proper records. Follow some simple guidelines.IRS Wisdom For Year-End Are you thinking about making a gift to us before the end of the year? Two very important questions are answered here.
Compassion & Choices is a nonprofit organization working to improve care and expand choice at the end of life. As a national organization with over 60 chapters and 50,000 supporters, we help patients and their loved ones face the end of life with calm facts and choices of action during a difficult time. We also aggressively pursue legal reform to promote pain care, put teeth in advance directives and legalize physician aid in dying. PO Box 101810 |
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Jean H. Gillett, a passionate supporter of the choice-in-dying movement, died December 3 at her home in Palo Alto, Calif. at the age of 89. Gillette was an active part of the movement for more than a quarter of a century. She was a charter member of the Hemlock Society and served in local chapters and on its national board. Gillette was both a talker and a doer. She gathered hundreds of signatures during citizen initiative drives for aid-in-dying law in California and never missed a hearing on the issue at the state capitol in Sacramento. She volunteered for the Hemlock Society’s Caring Friends and was an active supporter of Compassion & Choices' Client Support program. She was a long-time member of the Unitarian Universalist Church, which affirmed her deeply-held beliefs as a humanist. Her activism and devotion to our issue will be deeply missed.
There’s still time to make a tax-deductible donation to Compassion & Choices in the 2006 tax year. Just make an online credit card contribution by midnight on December 31 or mail a check dated and postmarked before the end of the year. Compassion & Choices will send you a receipt indicating the donation was made in 2006. Recent tax law changes may effect your charitable giving. If you have questions regarding your charitable tax deductions, we suggest that you visit the IRS Web site or consult your tax advisor. Your end-of-year gift to Compassion & Choices can lower your tax bill and will jumpstart our efforts to support, educate and advocate in the new year. • Make your year-end donation today APHA Says Language Matters The American Public Health Association (APHA) has announced a new policy that urges health care providers, health educators, journalists and policy makers not to use the terms “suicide” or “assisted suicide” to describe a mentally competent, terminally ill patient’s choice to self-administer medications to hasten death. • Read about the Oregon Department of Human Services language change
With a promise not to assist in any more deaths, Dr. Jack Kevorkian will be paroled in June of 2007. Kevorkian has served more than eight years of a 10 to 25 year sentence for second-degree murder in the 1998 controlled substance poisoning of Michigan resident Thomas Youk, who had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or Lou Gehrig’s disease. Kevorkian drew the national and international spotlight to the issue of aid in dying. His notorious actions were successful in raising awareness of the real fear of suffering a prolonged and agonized death, and have highlighted major public policy problems. Compassion & Choices advocates that all mentally competent, terminally ill patients should have a full range of end-of-life choices, including aggressive pain and symptom management, palliative sedation, voluntarily stopping eating and drinking, forgoing life extending interventions and aid in dying. Suffering from diabetes and active hepatitis C, the 78-year-old Kevorkian is not expected to live more than a year. Compassion & Choices believes he deserves the same chance for a peaceful, dignified death that is the right of all people. • Read the Detroit Free Press article
Compassion & Choices Circles Have you thought about bringing your commitment to end-of-life choice to the next level? Compassion & Choices Circles are donor communities that provide the financial stability necessary to support terminally ill patients and their families; educate the public, health care professionals, lawmakers and the media; and advocate in legislatures, in courts and at bedsides. Your pledge of $1,200 or more annually qualifies you for the exclusive benefits of Circles membership. To find out how you can become a frontline supporter of choice in dying, visit our website or call 800.247.7421 and ask for the C&C Circles concierge. • Learn more about C&C Circles
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 Copyright Compassion & Choices 2006 |
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