Human liberty isn't just a single light on our horizon, but more like stars in a constellation. Each freedom achieved, each choice secured, each dignity acknowledged, helps shape the whole, and the light of each emerges in its own time.

Who decides if a dying patient can...

Sometimes a movement's opposition is its best friend. And an opposition commentator is the first to tell the world transformative social change is underway.

A recent National Review cover story warns of a dangerously potent cultural shift. It seems Americans are moving out of frank denial and blind fear of...

Our nation approaches a fateful Autumn. Many analysts believe Congressional action on health care will dramatically affect the future of America, this administration and the major political parties. We are engaged in a struggle over whether our nation will approach issues of end-of-life care as adults, or remain captive...

The Senate Finance Committee may strike end-of-life consultation reimbursement from their version of the health care bill, so maybe the hysteria will die down. But it's sure to rise again if the provision survives in the House version. Will Congressional leaders summon the courage to deliver an adult...

Our nation has arrived at a fateful moment in the debate over health insurance reform. More than sixty years after Harry Truman recognized the health of all Americans as a public responsibility, we stand on the threshold, closer than ever to transforming our health insurance system into one that...

Opponents of health care reform are eager to kill legislation and fear is their favorite weapon. Their newest scare tactic, oddly, is the threat that patients will be able to make choices about the end of their lives. For over a decade, Compassion & Choices has been improving care...

In this country we usually torture people before we allow them to die of whatever is killing them --- cancer, emphysema, the multi-organ failure of diabetes or heart disease.

Like the episodes of military torture from which our nation is recovering, medical torture reflects a culture and a set of...

Working for social change, we run a long race through a wood, dark and deep. The milestones tick by, yet still the path leads ahead into the thicket. We long to break into a clearing and see the finish line ahead.

Over fifteen years ago I enlisted in the fight...

"Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light." --Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Dylan Thomas' famous admonition aside, at the appropriate time (and not...

When Wishes are Fishes

How do we get doctors to honor our wishes at the end of life? Most recommend preparing an Advance Directive, and I'm no exception. These documents are not infallible, but they are the best thing we've got going for us when we can't speak for...

Now is the time to raise our voices for patient choice and autonomy. From now until April 9th we must urge the Obama administration to repeal Bush's last-minute rule shielding health care workers who withhold from patients any treatment they consider morally objectionable.

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Media outlets from coast to coast and even abroad are covering Wednesday's arrest of leaders of Final Exit Network, (FEN) an organization that helps people die. An eight month investigation led to a sting operation that caught 2 people in Georgia telling an undercover agent how his death would...

Compassion & Choices recently rolled out 7 Principles for Patient Centered End-of-Life Care to guide policy-makers and other reformers. Decent and simple, the principles --- focus, self-determination, autonomy, personal beliefs, informed consent, balance and notice --- don't seem earth-shaking at first glance.

But they...

That meddlesome regulation encouraging health care workers to obstruct needed treatment considered offensive to their personal beliefs, went into effect January 19. It's still in place. I'm determined to continue blogging about this issue until it is repealed.

Congress, the administration, or both must act to restore the needs...

New HHS "Conscience" Rule is Prescription for Health Care Chaos

As part of its far-reaching social agenda, the Bush Administration instituted a health care regulation so sweeping and vast, its potential to wreak havoc seems, to me, unlimited. Popular press tells this story as one about abortion, but that's...

The administration, hurrying to cement its social agenda in place before leaving town, adopted a most meddlesome, dangerous rule at Health and Human Services.

The proposed "conscience" rule is scheduled to take effect on January 19, 2009. Congress and President-elect Obama have separate and distinct options to prevent implementation...