OPINION:
Driving down Route 22 in Hillside, N.J., motorists encounter a gigantic billboard proclaiming, “My Life, My Death, My Choice.” Paid for by the nonprofit Final Exit Network, the group formerly known as the Hemlock Society, this invitation to consider suicide is difficult to miss.
The stated mission of Final Exit is to “find new peaceful and reliable ways to self-deliver.” Continuing the commitment to perfecting the art of suicide created by the Hemlock Society’s infamous founder, Derek Humphry, the group encourages a “painless” death by suffocation.
Promoting the use of helium - using the same kinds of tanks used by party planners to inflate festive balloons - Final Exit instructs the suicidal to don airtight plastic bags and inhale helium pumped in through a tube.
Final Exit leaders claim the group has 3,000 members nationwide. Last year, four Final Exit members were arrested for aiding the suicide of a 58-year-old Georgia man. According to Georgia authorities, the group may have been involved in up to 200 deaths across the country through its so-called Caring Friends program.
While the group claims that it does not actively aid suicides, an undercover agent who infiltrated Final Exit says otherwise. According to published court documents, the agent said his new “caring friends” reassured him that “guides would stand by his side to ensure he didn’t pull the bag off his head.”
Denying that they are accomplices to murder, Final Exit Vice President Jerry Dincin told a New York Daily News reporter, “We hold your hand because a compassionate presence means you hold someone’s hand.”
While the Catholic Church has condemned the billboards, Cynthia McFarland, spokesperson for the Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey told a reporter for the New York Daily News that “some good could come out of it … it could be a useful thing.”
It should have been difficult for Final Exit to escape its dubious past, but it seems most people have forgotten that Mr. Humphry was implicated in the suicides of both of his ex-wives. Before she killed herself, Mr. Humphry’s second wife claimed he had admitted to her that he had been responsible for his first wife’s suicide. He was never formally charged with either of the suicides.
Today, Mr. Humphry is no longer the face of suicide. The 80-year-old author of “Final Exit” has been relegated to the back roads of the suicide movement by the celebrity of the even creepier Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Still directing Final Exit’s advisory board, Mr. Humphry is bitter about being replaced. In 2005, blaming “focus groups” for leading to the death of his beloved Hemlock Society, Mr. Humphry lamented that “the Hemlock Society as a name died suddenly in a boardroom in Denver, Colorado, on June 13, 2003.”
Mr. Humphry’s followers knew that the Hemlock Society had to disappear if they were to offer an acceptable alternative to a painful life. In the group’s newsletter, a Hemlock leader cautioned: “We need access to the halls of government in the states and in Washington, D.C. - access that the name Hemlock is currently denying us.”
In National Review, Wesley Smith writes that pro-suicide groups are attempting to change their image from collections of zealots to “dispassionate patient education groups.” Mr. Smith thinks some of these groups - such as Compassion and Choices - aspire to become the “Planned Parenthood of assisted suicide, no doubt hoping one day to receive public funds and medical referrals for end-of-life counseling.”
According to the website of Compassion and Choices - which coincidentally is also based in Denver and, according to its IRS filings, used to be called the Hemlock Foundation for End-of-Life Choices - the group’sleaders “have worked tirelessly with supportive members of Congress to include (in proposed health care reform legislation) a provision requiring Medicare to cover patient consultation with their doctors about end-of-life choice.”
Not only has Compassion and Choices influenced our current health care reform legislation, the renamed group has become so mainstream that Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, co-hosted a luncheon for members last year - as if it were just another nonprofit organization like the Red Cross or United Way.
It is difficult to identify the circuitous route these organizations have taken from their Hemlock Society origins, but it is even more difficult to predict whether they will continue their success in encouragingpeople to choose the route to suicide. The focus on choice and compassion from “caring friends” is appealing - especially to those on Route 22 who are getting tired of living.
Anne Hendershott is chairman of the politics, philosophy and economics program at the King’s College in New York City.
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