booth gardner - Washington Secretary of State

terminal illness people are very depressed. They feel helpless and hopeless and are more
inclined to consider assisted suicide at that point,” yet depression is an illness that can
be treated with great success. French said he got involved in Not Dead Yet because four
quadriplegics “died at the hands of Jack Kevorkian.” One was 21, another 26, and two
were in their forties. “I have to be honest,” he said. “If assisted suicide had been legal, at
many points in my life I probably would have chosen it and I would have missed the full
wonder and joy that I live now – that is my life – and I wouldn’t have met Kelly, the love of
my life and I wouldn’t enjoy the immense pleasure I have found in our relationship.”
Gardner moved woodenly to the podium. What happened next was vintage
Booth. “Is your wife here?” he asked French, who nodded toward her in the audience. He
spotted Kelly Boston’s pretty face, flashed one of his most charming old Booth smiles and
pronounced her “a good-looking lady.” French agreed. “I’m a lucky guy.” Though disabled
himself, Booth had seized the moment. “I respect your values,” he told French. “I only ask
that you respect mine – and I thought you did a great job with your speech.”
“One of the values we have as Americans is compassion,” Booth said slowly,
asking for their patience if he fumbled for words. He told the story of Nancy and Randy
Niedzielski. Suffering from a vicious brain tumor, Randy “was ready to die – a highly
intelligent man.” With about 30 percent of the people in hospice “you can’t cross that pain
barrier,” he said, adding that Niedzielski asked for more morphine when he had six more
months of agony to endure “but they wouldn’t give it to him.” Again showing flashes of
his old self, his face grew more animated, his voice steadier. “If there had been a problem
in Oregon, don’t you think we’d have heard of it? Don’t you think someone would have
stepped up in the past 10 years and said, ‘Wait, this isn’t working’?”
Booth insisted that the safeguards embraced by the initiative were more than
ample to prevent abuses. Two doctors had to say you were terminally ill, with less than
six months to live. The patient had to repeat the request twice, then again in writing. If
either doctor believed the person was not competent to make the request, a mental health
evaluation would be required. The patient had to be given information about pain relief
and hospice care, and it would be a crime – “a felony crime” – to coerce a terminally ill
person to seek assistance in dying. Finally and crucially, he said, physicians were not being
asked to violate their Hippocratic Oath to “not play at God.” “A patient must be able to selfadminister
the medication.” He said that “80 percent of the people who use it in Oregon
are in hospice before they die.”
He couldn’t catch his next thought. He stared blank-faced at his notes, then
turned to Arline Hinckley with a bashful smile. “Give me a cue,” he asked the campaign
spokesman. “Pardon me, folks, this is part of dealing with Parkinson’s.” Cued, he concluded
by saying that the Coalition Against Assisted Suicide had issued a statement asserting that
“it’s not a matter of choice,” it’s about suicide. “This bill isn’t about suicide,” Booth said
emphatically. “It’s about Death With Dignity. Look at the title. It’s ‘Death with Dignity.’
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