Barbara Coombs Lee (born 1947) is an American activist, author, former family nurse practitioner and physician assistant, and president emerita/senior adviser of Compassion & Choices,[1] a national non-profit organization dedicated to expanding and protecting the rights of the terminally ill.[2] Staffing the Oregon Senate Healthcare and Bioethics committee in 1991, Coombs Lee helped Oregon State Senator Frank L. Roberts as he proposed one of the first aid in dying laws in the nation.
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.
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.
[3] As of January 2019, eight jurisdictions have authorized aid in dying, including Oregon, Washington, Montana, Vermont, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, and Hawaii.
[4][5] In January 2019, Coombs Lee published Finish Strong: Putting Your Priorities First at Life’s End, a 294-page memoir and guide for transforming the end-of-life experience by giving readers a sense of their own authority—empowering them to ask questions, test assumptions, and decide on a course of treatment that honors the character and meaning of their lives.