Assisted Suicide Initiative Being Promoted in Washington State

From their website, "In Washington, the Coalition Against Assisted Suicide has formed to combat I-1000, the assisted suicide initiative that is being promoted for the 2008 ballot."
With the passing of this law assisted suicide would be legal in Washington State, allowing doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to patients with terminal illnesses to kill themselves. This law would be modeled after Oregon's Law.

In the Netherlands, where assisted suicide and euthanasia have been practiced for the last 20 years, since both have become less of a rare occurance and more of a standard practive, improvements in pain management and palliative care have slown down. "Pressure for improved pallitive care seems to have evaporated," according to Herbert Hendin, M.D., a Director of Suicide Prevention International.

From the Coalition Against Assisted Suicide website, we see what a slippery slope the acceptance of assisted suicide is:

"Once the Dutch accepted assisted suicide it was not possible legally or morally
to deny more active medical (assistance to die), i.e. euthanasia, to those who
could not effect their own deaths. Nor could they deny assisted suicide or
euthanasia to the chronically ill who have longer to suffer than the terminally
ill or to those who have psychological pain not associated with physical
disease. To do so would be a form of discrimination.

Involuntary
euthanasia has been justified as necessitated by the need to make decisions for
patients not [medically] competent to choose for themselves."


Research shows that, for one thousand people a year in the
Netherlands, physicians have ended their patients' lives without any request
from or consultation with the patients.

This would be our future. Go to the website and offer support now.