July 8, 2010 - The Northern California Chapter is excited to announce Paula Taubman, of Sebastopol, as the new Executive Director of Compassion & Choices of Northern California. Ms Taubman, who starts August 16, holds a Bachelor of Arts from Brooklyn College and a Master of Arts from Rutgers University. She has been in the health related nonprofit field for more than fifteen years and most recently was the Executive Director of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco.

Taubman has long been interested in compassionate end of life issues and has acted as a sounding board for friends and family at the end of their lives. The Board of Directors looks forward to working with Paula and continuing to ensure that terminally-ill individuals have peaceful and dignified deaths.

July 6, 2010 - Compassion & Choices of Northern California's Matters of Life & Death Scholarship Writing Contest was a huge success with 175 students responding to the following prompt: Why should California pass a law to establish aid-in-dying for terminally-ill patients who are suffering at the end of their lives?

The Contest which aims to expose college-bound eleventh and twelfth graders in California to the aid-in-dying movement is pleased to announce the following winners:

First Place: Jerry Lou
Second Place: Hailey Roumimper

To read the students' winning essays and to learn more about this annual scholarship contest, please click here.

January 2, 2010 - The Montana Supreme Court issued a decision, on December 31, 2009, allowing terminally-ill Montanans the right to choose aid-in-dying under state law. In a detailed review of Montana law on the "Rights of the Terminally Ill," the Court concluded that the legislature specifically defers to a patient's own decision and afford patients the right to control their own bodies at the end of life. The decision to self-administer life-ending medication receives the same treatment as a decision to discontinue life sustaining therapies such as mechanical ventilation. This is a landmark victory!

This makes Montana the first state where a court has determined that patients may request, and physicians may legally provide, aid-in-dying. This is a historic ruling, which will change the landscape of end-of-life choice in Montana; in addition this decision will have persuasive influence in other states across the nation (including California). Click here to read the Montana Supreme Court's decision. To learn more about this case, please check out Compassion & Choices' Web site.