The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (known poplularily as “the P-I” in that neck of the woods) reports in a copyrighted story that Washington’s former governer, Booth Gardner, filed an initiative last week to put a doctor-assisted suicide law on the ballot in November. Gardner says this is his “last campaign.”
The former governor is suffering from Parkinson’s Disease. His initiative is fashioned after a similar law in Oregon, and would allow doctors to prescribe a fatal dose of barbiturates to terminally ill patients diagnosed with six months or less to live. He needs to gather 225,000 valid voter signatures by July to get it on the ballot this Fall.
The Post-Intelligencer quotes Gardner as saying, “I went from thinking I was indestructible to knowing that I was no longer indestructible. Not that all my decisions we’re good by any stretch of the imagination, but I was still able to make them. Now I realize I can’t do that … the kids take over, the nurses and doctors take over, and you lose your autonomy.”
The P-I says that the initiative “does not come without its foes.” It reports that “opposition from doctors, lawyers and some Christian groups, as well as from disability-rights advocates, is likely to be formidable.”
I am sorry to hear that. Death with dignity should be the right of every human being. To me, the reasoning being used to oppose this initiative is specious at best. In its story the P-I quotes pastor Joe Fuiten of the Faith and Freedom Network as saying, “To me, the religious views are rather simple. ‘Thou shall not kill’ is still one of the Ten Commandments.”
I find this just a little confusing in the face of the fact that many Christian pastors across the nation have openly favored President Bush’s taking of this country into a war in Iraq. He did so, you will surely remember, on the basis of reports that that country was secretly stashing weapons of mass destruction. We now know that there never were any such weapons being hidden…so then we turned the military operation into one of nation building…something that Bush, in his first campaign for the White House, severely criticized President Bill Clinton for…and which Mr. Bush said that he would never, ever do.
Yes, well, all of that is ancient history…but what is not history is that many people seem comfortable even today using the “thou shall not kill” injunction as a reason to oppose what they want to oppose — but seem to completely ignore the injunction when it does not serve their purpose.
Now there are those who will argue that killing people in a war is not really killing, because it is “self-defense.” This, however, is the rationale used by every nation and every person in this history of our species who has ever entered into an armed conflict with others. Remember this and consider this carefully: All attack is called self defense.
There is something else that I just don’t understand about the fierce opposition to doctor-assisted suicide. Why is it that we allow dogs and cats and other mammals to be put to death in order to end their suffering when they are in unremitting pain and their quality of life has diminished to the point where it is not worth living, but we can’t see our way clear to allow humans — who at least have a conscious say in the matter — to do the same?
The P-I also reported that Duane French, a spokesman for the Coalition Against Assisted Suicide, referred to doctor-assisted suicide as a “phony form of freedom,” saying profit-oriented health care providers would be motivated to deny patients coverage, prompting a rise in deaths by patients who view suicide as the only viable solution.
Nothing of the sort has happened in Oregon, however — a point that the Post-Intelligencer failed to make.
Hmmm….