Doctor-assisted suicide law proposed
OLYMPIA – Following a U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding Oregon’s physician-assisted suicide law, a lawmaker here introduced a bill Thursday that would allow doctors to write prescriptions to help terminally ill patients die.
Sen. Pat Thibaudeau, D-Seattle, said she wasn’t sure if the bill would even get a hearing because it’s such a controversial topic to tackle during the short 60-day legislative session.
“It’s important to begin the discussion about it,” she said. “I believe it’s a matter of choice. As our population grows older, this will increasingly become an issue.”
Thibaudeau’s bill, which would create the Death with Dignity Act, would cover extremely sick people: those with incurable diseases, whom at least two doctors agree have six months or less to live and are of sound mind.
The law would mirror Oregon’s. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a Bush administration attempt to punish doctors who help terminally ill patients die.
Oregon’s law, the only one of its kind in the country, allows doctors only to write prescriptions for such patients, who must administer the drugs themselves.
Thibaudeau’s 14-page bill requires that patients be competent adults who make an informed decision to end their life if they have a terminal disease. They must make a written request that is witnessed by at least two people, and two doctors must confirm the diagnosis.
“There are limited numbers, but there are situations where a person wants to make this choice,” she said. “They should be allowed to make this choice.”
Washington voters narrowly rejected an initiative in 1991 that would have allowed doctors to write prescriptions to hasten death. Unlike Oregon’s law and Thibaudeau’s bill, Initiative 119 also would have allowed doctors to administer lethal injections to terminally ill patients who weren’t able to take the medications on their own.
Dan Kennedy, CEO of Human Life of Washington, called physician-assisted suicide “medicalized killing.”
“What it does, it turns the healing profession on its head,” he said. “People who are dying need tender loving care, they don’t need to be assisted out of this life.”
Midge Levy, vice president of Compassion & Choices of Washington, the state’s largest aid-in-dying advocacy group, said physicians would not be killing people if this measure passed.
“Killing implies something done against the person’s will,” she said. “We’re talking about an option for a prolonged and anguished dying process.”
Levy said the group hadn’t yet decided whether to support another initiative attempt if Thibaudeau’s bill failed.
The Washington State Medical Association opposes any effort to legalize physician-assisted suicide, spokeswoman Jennifer Hanscom said Thursday.
The association, which opposed I-119, also opposed the federal government’s action against doctors in the Oregon case. Hanscom said that did not constitute an endorsement of Oregon’s law, but that the association was opposed to the attempt by the federal government to come in and affect medical practice.