Exit guides, who tend to travel in pairs, educate their clients about all aspects of their eventual suicides and sit with them as they die. Final Exit Network is the only right-to-die group in the country, the group says, that offers this kind of service. Formed in 2004, the nonprofit was originally dismissed as fringe by its critics. Now, it has swelled to more than 3,000 members across the country, though it doesn’t have offices and is run entirely by volunteers. With affiliates in Arizona, Idaho, Illinois, Maine, Missouri, New York, and Oregon, the group boasts about 30 guides, like Schindler, who are determined to help anyone who qualifies. They advise clients to author a discovery plan for someone to find their bodies. They help them talk with family and friends and sometimes pen a note to authorities detailing their motives and methods.

Before Final Exit Network approves someone for its services, an exit guide visits his or her home. The guide conducts interviews with the applicant and family members. Have all other avenues been explored? Do you understand this is completely voluntary? Do you understand you can opt out at any time? Some clients have terminal illnesses; some have dementia; some are physically handicapped. They all are required to affirm to their exit guides that they don’t want to be in pain, that they want to die.

“People seem to think that we like to go around snatching people off the street and put them out of their misery,” Janis Landis, Final Exit Network’s president, said. “People who intrinsically believe that people shouldn’t have control over end of life … believe our organization is evil.”

But exit guides say they operate under a simple philosophy: Nobody enters this world alone, nor should anybody have to exit alone either.

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As the Final Exit Network continues its work, more and more states are vetting right-to-die legislation. Altogether, at least 24 states considered related bills in 2015—10 for the first time—according to the Death with Dignity National Center. Exit guides and Final Exit Network are approaching a crossroads in the midst of a broader legislative debate about who has the right to end their own lives. Generally in the United States, state-level right-to-die laws determine who may end their lives, and when, with the help of a physician. But Final Exit Network wants to break away from this medical model. “Our response is to give people the tools to make their own decisions to end their lives peacefully,” Landis said. “Why do you need a doctor?”

The actual legality of exit guides’ actions varies state to state. There are 39 states that have laws on the books against assisting a suicide. Except there is no universally accepted definition of “assisted suicide.” In some states, there has to be person-to-person physical contact. In others, assisted suicide could mean simply sharing literature or having a conversation about methods or means. Exit guides’ primary defense is their First Amendment right to free speech, said the network’s general counsel, Robert Rivas, because that’s all exit guides do when they sit with a person about to die: They talk.