booth gardner - Washington Secretary of State

equests for aid-in-dying drugs. Thirty-nine people took their own lives under its provisions
in the law’s first year. In Oregon, an average of just over 36 terminally ill people have used
the assisted-suicide law per year since it took effect in 1997, 401 in all. There were 60
assisted-suicide deaths there in 2008, the highest number to date.
At year’s end, the Montana Supreme Court ruled that nothing in state law prevents
its residents from seeking physician-assisted suicide. A year earlier, a lower court held
that constitutional rights to privacy and dignity protect the right to die. The high court’s
ruling on statutory grounds gives Montana doctors the freedom to prescribe lethal doses
of barbiturates to mentally competent, terminally ill patients without fear of prosecution,
Compassion & Choices said. However, Montana’s attorney general said the issue still needs
to be resolved by the Legislature.
In Washington State, Chris Carlson was Exhibit A for the opponents. On New Year’s
Day, at the dawn of new decade and some five years after he’d been given six months, he
was enjoying the bowl games, still “not dead yet.”
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