booth gardner - Washington Secretary of State

case, given modern palliative care and hospice, they said there was no need for anyone
to die in relentless, excruciating pain. One commercial featured a senior citizen who kept
“remembering what that governor in Colorado said about the elderly with terminal illness
have a duty to die” and save the system billions of dollars in end-of-life health care. Others
said assisted suicide, if passed, was sure to emerge as a cost-containment issue. “Any
number of warm and fuzzy and vague euphemisms are used to hide the ugly truth that this
is suicide – physician-assisted suicide,” said Shane Macaulay, a Bellevue radiologist.
“It will not stop here,” warned Sharon Quick, the Washington state coordinator for
the American Academy of Medical Ethics. “We’ve seen what happened in the Netherlands
… And what about the person who is paralyzed” and unable to place the lethal pills in his
or her mouth? “Isn’t that discrimination not to let them take their own life?” Quick, an
anesthesiologist was an assistant clinical professor at the University of Washington Medical
School.
An Elway Research study commissioned by the Washington State Medical
Association in 2007 found physicians equally conflicted by the issue. About half of the
respondents supported an I-1000 aid-in-dying option for their patients; 42 percent were
opposed. While the poll sampled only 502 of the Medical Association’s nearly 7,000
members, Stuart Elway, a respected pollster, said he was confident of its accuracy.
Robert Spitzer, the
Jesuit priest who headed
Gonzaga University, argued
passionately against the
initiative. “I’m very much
against it because one person’s
option can become another
person’s duty – the duty to
die.” Vulnerable people could
be sucked into the trap, Spitzer
said – the depressed, those
with low self-esteem, even
“good, strong, stoic people.” Martin Sheen warns that I-1000 is the slippery slope.
Well-meaning relatives could
Courtesy No On I-1000 campaign.
undermine a person’s will to live. And the law could also provide an opening for evil, greedy
ones “who really do wish a person ill. …Whatever it may be, the duty to die looms large and
it will touch the vast majority of our population.”
After an early-September Elway poll found 57 percent favoring the initiative, the
opponents called on Hollywood for help and launched a $750,000 TV and radio campaign.
In a compelling 30-second spot, Martin Sheen warned against legalizing assisted suicide.
The award-winning actor was a staunch opponent who volunteered his time. “We have a
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