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Washington Initiative 1000, the Washington Death with Dignity Act will be appearing on the Washington state ballot this November. It's boiled here nicely.
Its a law that makes it legal and provides a procedure for terminally-ill people to request euthanasia and for doctors to assist in that request.
The opponents of I-1000 want you to believe that people would be treated like livestock. At the first diagnosis of an incurable disease, they are taken behind the shed and shot. At the same time they want you to believe that people with 6 months to live are automatically unfit to decide how they want to die. They want you to believe that greedy insurance agents are waiting to stuff pills down people's throats so they don't have to pay for further care. These images are ridiculous. This bill is about legally allowing choice, ensuring people the freedom, to make one's own decision about one's own life.
Here are the least insulting arguments against I-1000:
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* Endangers those struggling with the high cost of health care. Under I-1000 an ill and vulnerable person could be pressured to “choose” a fatal drug overdose rather than be given the health care and support they need. No one wants to be a financial burden; mixing I-1000 with our current unequal and expensive healthcare system would be deadly. In Oregon Medicaid pays for assisted suicide for poor residents under the category of “comfort care”. The drug costs less than $100 – far less than medications and treatments to make patients comfortable. Already some Oregon patients seeking chemotherapy drugs for cancer have been denied treatment but sent a letter suggesting they consider assisted suicide (“A Gift of Treatment,” The Register-Guard?, Eugene, Oregon June 3, 2008)
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Yes, suicide is cheaper than being terminally ill. Cost for care of the remaining days may be a large part of someone's decision to end their own life. It may even be a very real fact of our shitty health care system causes this. But if you're not fixing healthcare and you're not putting up the money yourself for these people, fuck you. You don't get to point out the rock and the hard place someone is between and then kick them in the groin by blocking their last remaining options.
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* Allows doctors to give lethal drugs to mentally ill or depressed patients. Many people feel sad, lonely, or afraid when they are seriously ill. Under I-1000 any such “cry for help” by a fearful or depressed person could easily be mistaken for a request for assisted suicide. Depressed or mentally ill persons can be given lethal doses with no psychological evaluation required (“A psychological disorder…does not necessarily disqualify a person.” Oregonian, 10/17/99). In Oregon in 2007, no one was referred for psychological evaluation.
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Any competent adult can make their own decisions, period. Being depressed should not take away your right for you to determine what's best for you. As it is, I-1000 makes so that you need 2 doctors to agree and a 15 day waiting period. You can decide against it at any time. Or you could just jump in front of a bus, I guess.
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* Does not require that spouses and family be told before a doctor gives a loved one a lethal overdose. Under I-1000, a spouse or family member need not be consulted before the patient is given lethal drugs (I-1000, Sec. 8). Afterward, the family might never be told the truth of how their loved one died. Finding out after the fact that a loved one intentionally died from a drug overdose would be devastating for grief-stricken family members.
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Again. Competent adults can make their own decisions. If I were put in this situation, I probably would talk to my family and let them know that for their good and my own, I was going to end the suffering. But why should I be made to to tell them?
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* Has no safeguards for the patient after the prescription is written. No one needs to witness the death, only the initial request. There are no provisions to ensure that the patient is competent when the overdose is taken, that the patient is not pressured into taking the drugs, or that the fatal dose was not given to the patient against his or her will.
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We still have all the safeguards available to us that we have against it happening now. If someone's life is ended by another person its called murder.
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* Allows other people to give the patient the lethal overdose. Initiative 1000 states that the patient “may” self-administer the lethal overdose, but does not make the requirement mandatory.
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Again, it's murder if not self administered.
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* Allows beneficiaries to witness death requests. Estate law wisely frowns on heirs witnessing wills, but I-1000 allows beneficiaries to sign as a witness to the request for lethal drugs. I-1000 is dangerous because the death does not need to be witnessed, and there is the real possibility that people will be coerced or forced into ending their lives. Common sense tells us that no one who benefits from a death should be involved in giving lethal drugs to the patient; I-1000 does not include this common-sense safeguard.
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No more than people can be coerced out of having life saving operations performed on them. Really, this is a problem with a lot of things in life. I can be coerced into giving up my money, taking a shower or eating 8 $1 hotdogs at the race track. We already have laws against coercion.
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* Requires a doctor to falsify death certificates. I-1000 requires doctors to lie on the death certificate, so the fatal overdose is not listed. Instead, doctors are directed to fill out the death certificate as if the patient died of natural causes. Relatives would never know the real cause of death, and vital statistics could not be used to track assisted suicide. I-1000, Section 4, (1)(ii)(B)(2)
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Only a dubious life insurance agent would find this outrageous.
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* Has secretive and inadequate reporting so any abuses will never be known. The assisted suicide initiative requires that information on assisted suicide be collected I-1000, Sec. 15. However, there are no penalties for incomplete or inaccurate reports. And there are no penalties for failing to report. The original reports are kept secret and sealed from any possible independent study. The Oregonian, the state’s major newspaper, complained in 2005 that the law’s reporting system “seems rigged to avoid finding” the answers. Living with the Dying ‘Experiment,’ Oregonian, 3/8/05
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"Secretive" yeah, that's why a written request has to be filled out and filed. Just because I'm dead doesn't mean you get to dig around in my medical records looking for dirt.
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* Protects even bad or incompetent doctors from lawsuits. The doctors who prescribe drug overdoses would be given protection from lawsuits or disciplinary action by medical authorities. Most doctors are capable and honest, but I-1000 would make it impossible to stop assisted suicide malpractice. If doctors make a “good faith” effort to obey the law, they cannot be sued.
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Its still the patient's choice. And there have to be 2 likewise incompetent doctors that both agree on the terminal status of the patient.
It comes down to this; people should have the freedom to make this choice. I have yet to here a good argument of why not.
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