I'm posting this just to add to mix of debate. Oregon has had an assisted suicide law for a decade.

This was forwarded by a consultant from the opposition camp to Initiative 1000, which is on Washington's Nov. 4 ballot:

There has been a change of opinion regarding assisted suicide and Washington State’s I-1000 on the part of the editorial staff of the Portland Oregonian newspaper. The editorial was published in the paper’s Saturday, Sept. 20 online edition. The editorial appeared in the print edition today, Sunday, September 21.

The link to the article on the Oregonian website is provided. Once on the website, the editorial on assisted suicide is the fourth down.

http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/editorials/

The text of the editorial appears below my signature.

Cyndie Ulrich
Director of Communications
Coalition Against Assisted Suicide
ulrichconsulting@comcast.net
www.noassistedsuicide.com

[More:]

Washington state's assisted-suicide measure: Don't go there
by The Oregonian Editorial Board
Saturday September 20, 2008, 2:10 PM
As Washington state voters decide this fall on a physician-assisted suicide law much like Oregon's, we won't be repeating the warnings we raised more than a decade ago when this state was debating the issue.

Ten years' experience with Oregon's one-of-a-kind Death With Dignity Act has shown that our deepest concerns were unfounded. Safeguards built into the law appear to be working.

Terminally ill people from other states have not flocked to Oregon to commit suicide, and Oregonians themselves are not using the law in large numbers. It has not targeted the disabled as feared, nor has it steamrollered vulnerable people into taking their lives.

Still, even though Washington's initiative closely parallels Oregon's law, we won't be endorsing it.

Our fundamental objection is the same it has always been -- that's it's wrong to use physicians and pharmacists to hasten patients' deaths.

Washington's proposed law, like Oregon's, would allow terminally ill people to legally obtain lethal prescription drugs for ending their own lives. To qualify, the patient must be diagnosed by two physicians as having less than six months to live, must make two independently witnessed requests and must self-administer the medication.

Those and other safeguards appear to be working in Oregon. Washington voters should be aware, however, that this state's experience has been mixed.

On the plus side, the law has not created a tidal wave of assisted suicide since its enactment in 1997. Only 341 patients, 86 percent of them with terminal cancer, have died under its provisions. More than a third of those who have obtained lethal prescriptions never used them.

It's also true that the law is popular, twice winning voter approval, and that vigorous public debate over it has led to much-improved end-of-life care in Oregon. The state is recognized today as the national leader in providing access to palliative medicine and pain treatment.

The Oregon experience, however, has brought similar reform in many other states, including Washington, where most physicians don't want to write prescriptions to hasten patients' deaths. An argument can be made that Oregon's influence has already improved end-of-life care in Washington so much that the new law is not needed.

On the negative side, Oregon's physician-assisted suicide program has not been sufficiently transparent. Essentially, a coterie of insiders run the program, with a handful of doctors and others deciding what the public may know. We're aware of no substantiated abuses, but we'd feel more confident with more sunlight on the program.

We defended Oregon's right to this law when it was under attack by the Bush administration, and we have taken sharp issue with claims that the worst fears about the program have been borne out. But our basic unease with physician-assisted suicide has not changed, and we cannot exhort Washington voters to take the same path.

-- Bob Caldwell, editorial page editor; bobcaldwell@news.oregonian.com