Washington State Initiative I-1000

By Alex Schadenberg

The initiative to legalize assisted suicide in Washington State appears to be gaining ground.

The Death With Dignity I-1000 campaign to legalize assisted suicide in Washington State has effectively raised one million dollars. They have organizations such as the leading assisted suicide lobby group - Compassion & Choices, working to raise more money on a national basis and they have the former governor of Washington State, Booth Gardner, as a lead campaigner.

Every American who opposes assisted suicide, whether they be disability rights activists, palliative care professionals, pro-life supporters or any person in general, needs to join the campaign to oppose I-1000.

Initiative I-1000 supporters are currently collecting signatures throughout the State of Washington. Due to the money they are spending on paid signature collectors I expect that they should be able to collect 226,000 valid signatures.

We cannot wait until the signature campaign is verified before we start to raise the necessary money to oppose the legalization of Oregon Style assisted suicide in Washington State.

The Campaign against assisted suicide in Washington State must become the priority for all Americans who oppose assisted suicide.

Please go to the website http://noassistedsuicide.com/ and donate money or offer support today.

Language Enginieering: Joel Connelly Gets It on Initiative 1000:

The Seattle PI columnist Joel Connelly is a refreshing exception to much of the media that continue to see assisted suicide as a modernistic "choice" issue rather than one founded in abandonment and inequality. He has a column today (for which I was interviewed) properly critical of the word engineering in which the "Death with Dignity" crowd engages to persuade people that hemlock is really honey. From his column:

If you are campaigning for the "right" of people to kill themselves, the first challenge is finding a nonlethal definition: Soft, reassuring terms must be substituted for the off-putting phrase "assisted suicide."...

Apparently Gardner and political consultants advising him never met Derek Humphrey, plain-spoken co-founder of the Hemlock Society."As the author of four books on the right to choose to die, including 'Final Exit,' I find the vacillation by (Oregon's) Department of Human Services on how to describe the act of a physician helping a terminally ill person to die by handing them a lethal overdose--which they can choose to drink (or not)--an affront to the English language," Humphrey wrote to The Register Guard newspaper in Eugene, Ore. " 'Physician' means a licensed M.D.; 'assisted' means helping; and 'suicide' means deliberately ending life. "The department's cop-out choice of the words 'death with dignity' is wildly ambiguous and means anything you want. Let's stick to the English language and in this matter call a spade a spade."

That would be the approach for those respectful of democracy. But assisted suicide activists want to win, and are not about to let a little language deconstruction get in the way of their goal.

Then, there is the money:

Among local political consultants, I-1000 is becoming a cause to die for. The Yes-on-1000 Committee has shelled out more than $333,000, in increments of $10,000 to $50,000, to 12 consulting firms and consultants.

Prominent Democratic consultants are on the receiving end. J. Blair Butterworth, chief political adviser to former Gov. Gary Locke, has received $15,000. And Northwest Passage Consulting, headed by Sen. Maria Cantwell's former campaign aide Christian Sinderman, has received $21,789. The list is growing. "Signature Gatherers Needed Immediately. Great $$$!" read an ad on Craigslist.com last week. A company, National Ballot Access, seeks paid signature gatherers for assisted suicide, promising 75 cents for each voter that signs the petition.

Gardner's letter referenced by Connelly, which I discussed here at SHS, whines about all the money the opponents will spend to prevent "compassion." But the reverse is actually true. Assisted suicide is primarily an elitist agenda. The primary advocates are almost all among the well tailored. Millions are being poured into the effort internationally, and hundreds of thousands from around the country into the Washington campaign--and that's before Gardner opens his own wallet.

I have predicted that this measure will fail in the end. Perhaps that is my heart overruling my head. But there is so much bad about assisted suicide that it can be defeated, as it has repeatedly been in legislatures and voter initiatives since Oregan's law passed in 1994.

The key, though, is getting the message out. We'll see how it goes.

Booth Gardner's Disingenuous Fundraising Letter for Assisted Suicide

Yes, I know that political fund raising letters are well known for hyperbole and stretching the truth. And Booth Gardner's 4-page letter (no link available) to raise money for "I-1000" the assisted suicide initiative, is of a kind. Space doesn't permit a full deconstruction, but here is just a sampling of the manure Gardner shovels: He writes:

When we or a loved one are experiencing unbearable suffering--past the point where there is hope for recovery--there is a grace inside our humanity that is capable of saying, "It's time."

Well, yes. A time comes to allow nature to take its course. But the idea that assisted suicide is about "unbearable suffering" just isn't true. Even the useless annual report from Oregon makes it very clear that most people asking for a lethal prescription are not in unbearable suffering. Indeed, a recent medical journal article--ignored as I knew it would be by the press--found that some Oregon patients weren't even experiencing significant symptoms when receiving assisted suicide.

Gardner continues:

Opponents of the right are vehement and determined. Their reasons range from well-meaning to appallingly invasive. In their zeal, they distort the truth, raise false alarm, and denigrate our souls with their fear.

Far be it from me to "denigrate" anyone's soul, but opponents are not nearly exclusively of the "right." Indeed, disability rights activists are the most effective opponents of legalizing assisted suicide and they are overwhelmingly people of the Left. Medical professionals are also opponents, and most of them are not of the "right" either. Indeed, a recent book I reviewed by the liberal public intellectual Robert P. Jones, demonstrated convincingly that legalizing assisted suicide is decidedly illiberal.

Gardner references living wills and states:

A Living Will does not, however, address the right to make a choice about ending our lives when we are terminally ill and in unbearable pain or anguish.

Of course, there is nothing in I-1000 requiring that a suicidal patient be "in unbearable pain and anguish."

Then, he gets to the wearyingly predictable, focus group tested, word engineering:

Death with dignity is not suicide. Nor is it assisted suicide, or physician-assisted suicide. By its very nature, suicide is the irrational act of a person choosing to end their life before it's time. For the terminally ill, death is already a reality...A Death with Dignity law simply enables a patient with less than six months left to live to make a rational decision to end unbearable suffering.

That's all nonsense, of course. Even Derek Humphry, founder of the Hemlock Society, acknowledges that, well, assisted suicide is assisted suicide. Moreover, there are many people who suffer far more profoundly, and for longer, than people with a terminal illness. Which, of course, is why we now see advocacy for assisted suicide for the mentally ill.

But never mind facts. Gardner, like most demagogic campaigners, prefers to conger Bogey men to pass his agenda. It's going to be a long campaign.