Assisted suicide push gets emotional

OLYMPIA – There isn’t much John Peyton can do on his own except speak, and soon he’ll lose even that. The former Boeing computer programmer has Lou Gehrig’s disease, which progressively paralyzes its victims. His doctor gives him three to six months to live.

Nancy Niedzielski’s husband, Randy, endured six years of treatment for brain cancer that spread to his nervous system, causing chronic, painful muscle contortions. He died in 2006, incontinent, unable to swallow normally and barely able to speak.

Peyton and Niedzielski are on opposite sides of a fight over a ballot initiative to allow physicians in Washington state to help terminally ill patients end their lives. Peyton opposes the measure; Niedzielski supports it. Oregon, where voters first approved the idea in 1994, is the only state with such a law.

Supporters need to collect about 225,000 valid voter signatures by July 3 to get the “Washington Death with Dignity Initiative” on the November ballot. The campaign has raised more than $1 million, more than enough for a successful signature drive, setting up a fiercely fought and emotional campaign.

Initiative 1000 mirrors the Oregon law, which took effect in 1997 after a lengthy court fight, and would allow terminally ill people to obtain lethal prescription drugs to end their own lives.

Any patient requesting the medication would have to make two oral requests, 15 days apart, and submit a written request witnessed by two people, including one person who is not a relative, heir, attending doctor, or connected with a health facility where the requester lives.

Two doctors would have to agree on the diagnosis of a terminal disease – giving the patient six months or less to live – and declare that the patient “is competent, is acting voluntarily, and has made an informed decision.”

Former Washington Gov. Booth Gardner, a millionaire heir to the Weyerhaeuser fortune, has waged a public campaign in support of the measure.

Gardner suffers from Parkinson’s disease, which is incurable but not fatal, so he would not qualify if the initiative becomes law. But his worsening condition has made him an advocate for those who want control over how they die.

“It’s amazing to me how much this can help people get peace of mind,” Gardner told the Associated Press. “There’s more people who would like to have control over their final days than those who don’t.”

Gardner’s position has caused strain with longtime friends, political allies and his family.

Gov. Chris Gregoire, a Catholic, has said she personally can’t support the measure, but won’t actively work against it.

Gardner’s 46-year-old son, Doug, said he and his father didn’t talk for a time once it was clear he was opposed to the measure. While their relationship has improved, the younger Gardner said he’ll still “join the chorus” of voices opposed to Initiative 1000.

“I love him, I want the best for him,” Doug Gardner said. “But don’t make it easier for these people who are in a weak state to have an opt-out option.”

Along with Oregon, three European countries – Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands – authorize assisted suicide.

In an AP-Ipsos poll conducted nationally last year, 48 percent of those polled said it should be legal for doctors to prescribe drugs to help terminally ill patients end their own lives; 44 percent said it should be illegal.

That poll showed religious faith was a strong factor in views on the subject. Only 34 percent of those who attend religious services at least once a week favored the idea, while 70 percent of those who never attend religious services approved.

Niedzielski, of Lynnwood, said her husband wanted to move to Oregon as his condition worsened, but doctors said he wouldn’t live long enough to establish residency. One of his last wishes was for her to fight for a law in Washington state. Six weeks before he died, the pain was so great that he asked his wife to help him die. She told him she couldn’t.

“To be in this position, where I couldn’t give to him what he wanted … for me it was very frustrating to see that he wanted to end his suffering,” she said. “I saw what my husband went through and it changed me forever.”

Peyton sees it differently. He says he’s made peace with the pain and anxiety he may face as his disease increasingly impairs his breathing, eventually killing him.

Initiative 1000, he argues, makes “suffering and pain such an evil that any means justifies the end of eliminating the suffering or the pain.”

“What we’re really doing, I believe, is attempting to eliminate the sufferer so we don’t have to deal with them.”