Barbara Coombs Lee

Female, Person

1947 –

52

Who is Barbara Coombs Lee?

Barbara Coombs Lee, PA, FNP, JD, is an American activist and president of Compassion & Choices, a national non-profit organization dedicated to expanding and protecting the rights of the terminally ill. She practiced as a nurse and physician assistant for 25 years before becoming an attorney and devoting her professional life to individual choice and empowerment in health care.

Staffing the Oregon Senate Healthcare and Bioethics committee in 1991, she helped Oregon State Senator Frank L. Roberts as he proposed one of the first aid in dying laws in the nation. Unfortunately, the committee never approved the bill, and Roberts died of his prostate cancer in 1993, suffering the kind of slow, painful death he hoped his bill would spare him. When Coombs Lee read in her church bulletin that congregants wanted to draft a Death with Dignity bill and place it before Oregon voters, she volunteered to help. She co-authored the bill and became one of three chief petitioners who filed the Oregon Death with Dignity Act as a citizens’ initiative in 1994. Ms. Coombs Lee served as spokesperson for the group through two statewide campaigns and 10 years defending against attacks on the nation’s first Death with Dignity law in both the judicial and legislative arenas. Senator Roberts’ wife, Oregon Governor Barbara Roberts, became a good friend and a tireless and outspoken advocate for Death with Dignity.

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Born
1947
Education
  • Vassar College

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

Citation

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