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Yakima Herald-Republic
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Washington would become the second state in the nation, after Oregon, to hold doctors legally immune if they participate in ending someone's life.
Signature-gathering to put Initiative 1000 on the November ballot started three weeks ago. Supporters say the initiative would offer terminally ill people a chance to die with dignity.
But Linda Seaman, a Yakima doctor who used to run the hospice program at the hospital now known as Yakima Regional Medical and Cardiac Center, focused on two points during the Wednesday evening presentation at First Presbyterian Church. About 15 people attended.
First of all, doctors shouldn't be involved in helping patients kill themselves, she said. Second, opening the door to assisted suicide for ill adults could lead to similar pushes for others.
"The slippery slope isn't a joke. It's a reality, and it's proven," she said.
A 1991 report on involuntary deaths in the Netherlands, which allows assisted suicide, suggested that doctors had acted in some cases without consent.
That amounts to forced euthanasia, Seaman said, predicting that the news media and initiative supporters would avoid that term as they discuss the proposal.
However, proponents of the change say that suicide itself is a loaded term.
Allowing someone to choose to end his life is compassionate and lets the person make his own decision, said Christian Sinderman, a spokesman for the I-1000 campaign.
"Suicide is a loaded term that really doesn't apply to what we've seen in Oregon and what would be reflected in Washington," he said.
An average of 38 doctor-assisted suicides have taken place in Oregon each year over the past five years. About 65 lethal prescriptions were written in 2006.
Sinderman said Oregon's annual reports on the law, which went into effect in 1997, show it has been used sparingly.
Critics say Oregon's version allows patients to shop for doctors who will fill their requests and doesn't have enough safeguard to prevent depression from guiding the decision.
Sinderman said volunteer signature-gathers, plus what he described as a small number of paid staff, have been meeting their weekly targets for signatures. He did not release the number of signatures gathered so far, but he said the campaign is on track to meet its requirement to submit 225,000 names to the state by July.
Local coordinators are active in Yakima County, he said.
Seaman said she hopes to organize a community forum on the topic this fall, but that's still in the planning stages.
* On the Web:
www.yeson1000.org
www.noassistedsuicide.com
* Mark Morey can be reached at 577-7671 or mmorey@yakimaherald.com.
