Based on his experiences as a grief and crisis counselor, John A. Pridonoff was convinced that people with terminal illnesses should have the right to end their own lives.
“I have been faced too many times with instances of people dying, stripped of their dignity, integrity and sense of self-respect. It’s not that I feel terminally ill people should do this but that terminally ill should be able to discuss this without the intrusion of organized religion or organized government beyond the appropriate safety structures within the law,” he once told the Los Angeles Times.
Pridonoff earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from California State University, Los Angeles, and received a doctorate in thanatology and a master’s in theology from the Colgate Rochester Divinity School in New York. After he was ordained as a minister in the Congregationalist Christian Church, he became a volunteer counselor and chaplain at Grossmont Hospital in San Diego.
For a quarter of a century, Pridonoff worked as the executive director of The Counseling Center in San Diego, a nonprofit organization that provides trauma, grief and crisis counseling to medical professionals. He also edited The Forum, the Association for Death Education and Counseling’s quarterly newsletter.
Then in 1992, Pridonoff was selected to be the new executive director of the Hemlock Society, an organization that lobbies for right-to-die laws for the terminally ill. During his three-year tenure, he pushed for a constitutional amendment permitting “death with dignity,” and fought for the passage of Oregon’s assisted suicide law. Oregon is the only state in America that allows physician-assisted suicide.
Pridonoff died on Nov. 24 from heart failure. He was 62.
[Update – Aug. 17, 2008 – Age has been corrected.]
John Pridonoff
Categories: Medicine, Religious Leaders