Political consultant Christian Sinderman confirms that a “Death with Dignity” initiative campaign will launch in January, with petitions on the street by February if the ballot title is approved by the state attorney general’s office.

Sinderman says the 2008 initiative will differ from Initiative 119, the 1991 version that Washington voters rejected.

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The 2008 version is different in that it is a narrowly written statute almost identical to the Oregon law. Only terminally ill, mentally competent adults can use the law, and their condition must be validated by two physicians.

Oregon’s law was approved by voters in 1994 and has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court as an issue for states to decide. (see Pat O'Callahan's note below).

Plans for the new Washington initiative have been in the works for at least a year, but they came to the fore this week when former Gov. Booth Gardner’s quest for an aid-in-dying law was profiled in The New York Times Sunday Magazine. Gardner was expected to serve as “poster boy” for the 2008 campaign.

State Death with Dignity organizers were dismayed by the article, which portray deep estrangement between Gardner and his son Doug. The son adamantly opposes assisted suicide. The article also showed that Gardner favors physician-assisted suicide for people who have incurable diseasess but may not be terminally ill – like Gardner, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease.

Update: Tom Preston, a Seattle physician active in the Death with Dignity movement, offers this clarification about the article:

Unfortunately, this appears to be what the author of the article wanted to convey, and they put it in the side-bar on the Magazine cover. But this is what Booth was saying up until about 15 months ago -- sinc then he has supported an Oregon-style law, acknowledging that it would not help him.

Also, Booth doesn't favor physician-assisted suicide -- by law in OR it is not suicide. Suicide is of persons who are not dying and who have remediable conditions. Physician aid in dying is of patients for whom the dying process is going, they will die within six months, and their condition is not treatable or correctable.

Sinderman will team with another high-proifle Seattle-based Democratic consultant, Blair Butterworth, on the campaign.

Although some members of the TNT editorial board were sympathetic in principal to Initiative 119, we opposed it on grounds that the measure lacked sufficient safeguards against abuse. The composition of the ed board has changed since then, so there’s no telling how the board would come down if the measure makes the ballot.

Chief editorial writer Patrick O'Callahan adds:

The substance of the Oregon law wasn’t reviewed by the Supreme Court. The court’s focus was on whether John Ashcroft was correctly interpreting federal drug laws as empowering him to prevent the use of prescriptions in suicides. That case concerned a congressional statute that Congress could change at its discretion. An earlier decision arising from a challenge of Washington’s law against assisted suicide has sometimes been mischaracterized as a license for states to do what they want. In fact, it was a decision allowing states to prohibit assisted suicide. Some justices undoubtedly would extend the same latitude to a law like Oregon’s, but the court hasn’t addressed that issue head-on.