While California Legislators Play Politics with Compassionate Choices Act, End of Life Consultation to Help Terminally Ill is Launched

We are stepping in where the government has failed to act.

The End-of-Life Consultation program will help terminal patients access hospice, pain treatment and other excellent end-of-life care.

We are volunteers, and we are honored to give our time to support and empower those facing the end of life.

End-of-Life Consultation can prevent suffering, violence and other harm.

Each caller will receive a confidential assessment of their situation and discussion of their options.

Volunteers visit patients and families in the home, and together they identify a path to peaceful dying, well-suited to an individual’s illness and circumstances.

Volunteers counsel and support the patient and family through any decision, no matter how difficult.

Volunteers neither provide nor administer the means for aid in dying.

Clients obtain and self-administer these means.

We do not break or defy the law.

Our End of Life Consultation is non-judgmental – any choice the patient makes we respect.

We will not abandon any patient.

We clergy are leading this effort because helping people face the end of life is part of our ministry. End-of-life decisions reflect the values and spiritual beliefs cultivated throughout a lifetime. People often hope the manner of their dying will fulfill their relationship with God, honor the life they led and ease their loved ones’ grief. It is our mission to help them find a peaceful death that reflects their beliefs.

The will to live is strong. Aid in dying is never a patient’s first choice. Only when the burdens of continued existence outweigh its benefits, even with the best palliative care medicine has to offer, will a patient seek aid in dying. It will be a rare decision at the far end of a continuum of care. Aid in dying is a humane last resort when a patient determines his or her suffering has become intolerable.

As an ordained minister, I would not aid any vibrant, vital person in ending his or her life. Suicide is a sin in most religions, and it is a crime to assist in a suicide. But I am a co-convener of the End-of-Life Consultation service because it is not about suicide. The consultation serves terminally-ill patients who would choose to live if they could, but in fact, may only choose the circumstances of their dying.

Our program will treat terminal patients with the dignity and respect they deserve.

They deserve information and compassion to help ease their dying.

They deserve a full range of choices and end-of-life care.

They don’t deserve to be shamed, demeaned, abandoned or condemned to suffer needlessly.

Until the politicians find the courage to enact full end of life choice, clergy and volunteers will step in to support dying patients to die according to their own beliefs, not those of anyone else.

I urge those suffering at the end of life to call our number, 1-800-247-7421.

Help is available and you need not face the end of life alone, in unrelenting pain, or choose a violent end to an otherwise meaningful, satisfying and fulfilled life.