Final exit

When her mother finally died, in 2001, Schindler promised her grown children they’d never see their own mother suffer the same way. The experience, she said, had helped her form her views on death. Now she had a plan: Her own death would be swift, painless, on her own terms. And she knew how to get the job done.

For about a decade, Schindler, 77, has been an exit guide—a mentor for suffering people who want to end their own lives—for the controversial right-to-die group Final Exit Network. It’s her job to ensure the people she helps die are not alone in their last moments. As more and more states consider death-with-dignity and assisted-suicide laws, exit guides have become caught between a political battle and an ethical one.

“Grandma Fran,” Schindler’s young granddaughter once asked, “do you kill people?”…

Exit guides, who tend to travel in pairs, educate their clients about all aspects of their eventual suicides and sit with them as they die. Final Exit Network is the only right-to-die group in the country, the group says, that offers this kind of service. Formed in 2004, the nonprofit was originally dismissed as fringe by its critics. Now, it has swelled to more than 3,000 members across the country, though it doesn’t have offices and is run entirely by volunteers. With affiliates in Arizona, Idaho, Illinois, Maine, Missouri, New York, and Oregon, the group boasts about 30 guides, like Schindler, who are determined to help anyone who qualifies. They advise clients to author a discovery plan for someone to find their bodies. They help them talk with family and friends and sometimes pen a note to authorities detailing their motives and methods…

Before Final Exit Network approves someone for its services, an exit guide visits his or her home. The guide conducts interviews with the applicant and family members. Have all other avenues been explored? Do you understand this is completely voluntary? Do you understand you can opt out at any time? Some clients have terminal illnesses; some have dementia; some are physically handicapped. They all are required to affirm to their exit guides that they don’t want to be in pain, that they want to die…

But exit guides say they operate under a simple philosophy: Nobody enters this world alone, nor should anybody have to exit alone either…

Generally in the United States, state-level right-to-die laws determine who may end their lives, and when, with the help of a physician. But Final Exit Network wants to break away from this medical model. “Our response is to give people the tools to make their own decisions to end their lives peacefully,” Landis said. “Why do you need a doctor?”…

There are 39 states that have laws on the books against assisting a suicide. Except there is no universally accepted definition of “assisted suicide.”…

Exit guides’ primary defense is their First Amendment right to free speech, said the network’s general counsel, Robert Rivas, because that’s all exit guides do when they sit with a person about to die: They talk.

Assisted-suicide laws show that most states don’t consider talking or communicating as a means of assisting a suicide. But there are at least seven that do: California, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and South Dakota. Exit guides don’t stray from operating in those states, but they do so at a risk. “I don’t think there’s all that much law enforcement going on with Final Exit Network,” Rivas said…

Others have accused the group of glorifying suicide. One such band of critics is Not Dead Yet—essentially the antithesis of Final Exit Network. Not Dead Yet “is a national, grassroots disability rights group that opposes legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia,” according to its website…

Stephen Drake, a Not Dead Yet research analyst—who dubbed Final Exit Network “the Tea Party of the right-to-die movement”—said most people are missing the bigger picture. “The fact of the matter is they have no idea if [exit guides] are following their policy,” Drake said. “Lots of people who contemplate suicide change their mind. … Why would people who are old, ill, or disabled not change their minds at the last moment?”

Exit guides say their policies are simple but strict: don’t encourage, don’t facilitate, don’t touch…

In 2012, a Dakota County Minnesota grand jury indicted the group on charges of assisting a suicide and interfering with a death scene. Prosecutors in these proceedings accused exit guides who worked with a woman named Doreen Dunn, who killed herself in 2007, of covering their tracks to make it appear that the woman died of natural causes, according to a 2012 statement from the Dakota County Attorney’s Office.

“Once the Exit Guides have determined the member has died, they will proceed to gather equipment used in the suicide. They will also collect all materials referencing any connection with Final Exit Network,” the statement reads. “If requested by the member, Exit Guides will also remove all other items indicating a suicide had occurred. Exit Guides subsequently dispose of these materials in a trash bin some distance away from the location of the suicide.” (Death by helium asphyxiation, Dunn’s method as well as the once-preferred method by most exit guides—is virtually undetectable in medical autopsies. The group has since stopped recommending helium, suggesting nitrogen in its place, because manufacturers started adding oxygen to tanks to make them safer.)…

A Minnesota district court convicted the corporation in May 2015 of assisting a suicide, a felony, and interfering with a death scene. Final Exit Network was fined $30,000 and are in the process of appealing the conviction.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/07/the-volunteers-who-help-people-end-their-own-lives/489602/

See:  https://childnervoussystem.blogspot.com/2015/06/brave-new-world.html  

https://childnervoussystem.blogspot.com/2015/09/medicalization-of-suicide.html