Helping to Provoke a Harder Look at Aid-in-Dying

Final Exit Network trains “Exit Guides” to provide information, education, and emotional support to members who have chosen to die rather than suffer intolerably. The 501(c)(3)corporation's volunteers do not use the word “suicide” to refer to one's rational choice to hasten death when there is no hope of being restored to a reasonable quality of life. FEN offers Exit Guide support to carefully screened members. Assisting in a suicide is a felony in 37 states. FEN carefully avoids violating these laws by not providing any direct physical assistance in any suicide. Nonetheless, in 2009, nine charges of assisting in a suicide were brought against FEN volunteers in Arizona and Georgia. FEN completely defeated six of the nine charges and virtually defeated three of them. In the Georgia case, the state Supreme Court ruled that the statute was unconstitutional under the First Amendment. FEN is helping to provoke changes in the law, and in the culture of the health-care community, in end-of-life care. The organization would prefer to be rendered obsolete by the American public being offered satisfactory end-of-life care and more options to hasten death under appropriate controls. In the meantime, he government is attempting to squelch the debate over options at the end of life. Another prosecution of FEN and its volunteers has been commenced in Minnesota under a law that plainly infringes on First Amendment rights, and FEN is committed to establishing that the Minnesota law is unconstitutional.