Alice Naumburg Proskauer Memorial Project
The purpose of Compassion & Choices’ Alice Naumburg Proskauer Project is to identify, recruit, organize and apply physician support for legalization of physician aid in dying for patients who request it. Such aid would be provided to those enduring unrelievable pain or suffering.
The project was established to honor the part Alice Naumburg Proskauer played in the founding of what today has become the “Choice in Dying Movement.”
A headline in the New York Times of January 17, 1938 read, “New Group formed to fight for legislation to end the agony of those who are incurably ill.” The founders of this group, the
Euthanasia (Greek for 'good death') Society of America subscribed to the “belief that with adequate safeguards it should be made legal for incurable sufferers to choose immediate death rather than await it in agony.”
And so, in 1939, such a bill was proposed to the New York State Legislature, where it failed. Even then, 46% of the public favored it. A dedicated band composed of medical, religious, educational and community leaders has carried on the philosophy of this original group, with several name changes. Now, Compassion & Choices is taking this movement into the 21st century to achieve at long last what those farsighted leaders envisaged when they spoke out in 1938.
Alice Naumburg Proskauer, a community activist member of the founding group, passed on her vision to her descendents who dedicate this project to her.
> Read the recent American Medical News' article on support of physicians for aid in dying (PDF)
> Access related medical journal articles in our document database
If you would like to become more involved with this effort, please email us at info@compassionandchoices.org
If you have received a request from a patient for information on hastening death, please have your patient call us at 800.247.7421
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