To Gently Leave This Life: The Right To Die

To Gently Leave This Life: The Right To Die, which explores the right-to-die movement and the human tragedies, such as Karen Quinlan’s difficult death, that precipitated assisted dying legislation in several states in the U.S., and in several countries in Europe, Canada, and South Africa. Patients living in these states and countries have the option of choosing assisted death if their suffering becomes unbearable.

FAYE GIRSH, PRESIDENT – WORLD FEDERATION OF RIGHT TO DIE SOCIETIES: To Gently Leave This Life: The Right to Die is an excellent handbook for those who are living through the struggle now, and those new to the fight who are just realizing what could be in store for them when there is no way out of a prolonged, agonizing death. Elaine Feuer has succeeded in compiling the progress of the right-to-die movement in her carefully researched, helpfully illustrated, easily read short volume. This overview explains, especially to the naive reader, what the human tragedies were that precipitated changes in the law toward further control by patients to control their own deaths. She presents the safeguards and the modest use of these laws to reduce suffering at the end of life and the arguments against these changes. Right-to-die advocates around the world are moving fast, making it hard to keep such a book up-to-date, but Feuer has worked assiduously to make her information as accurate as possible, to demonstrate the importance of people being able to have more say about when and how the end will come.