Initiative would let patients end lives

For six years, Randy Niedzielski’s body was slowly destroyed by brain cancer.

He lost his ability to speak. He couldn’t swallow and he lost control of his arms, legs and fingers, said his wife, Nancy Niedzielski.

By the end, the Lynnwood man couldn’t even breathe normally, she said.

Before he died in July 2006, he asked his wife to make a promise: “That I would change the law in Washington state,” she said.

On Wednesday morning in Olympia, Niedzielski watched as former Gov. Booth Gardner filed an initiative that would allow terminally ill people in the state to end their own lives.

“Throughout his illness, (Randy) made all the decisions about his treatment,” Nancy Niedzielski said. “I felt it was his illness, his life, his decision. He was ready to die. We need this law.”

The initiative would make Washington the second state in the nation to offer such an option. Called Death with Dignity, the law would allow people who have been diagnosed with an incurable illness to take medication that would cause their death. The option would be available only to people who have been told by doctors that their illness will likely kill them within six months.

Gardner and other backers of the initiative have until July 3 to collect 224,800 signatures to get the proposal on the ballot in November. Once there, it needs only a simple majority to become law.

“This initiative is a compassionate and reasonable measure,” Gardner said.

The proposal is modeled closely after Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act, which voters in that state approved in 1994. The vote sparked a legal battle that lasted until 1997, when the act became law.

Gov. Chris Gregoire said Tuesday that she will not support Gardner’s proposal.

“I find it on a personal level very, very difficult to support assisted suicide,” she said.

Gardner said Wednesday that though Gregoire won’t support the proposal, “that’s a long way from saying she’ll work against it.”

This isn’t the first time Washington voters have considered assisted suicide. In 1991, 54 percent of voters rejected a proposal that would have allowed terminally ill patients to opt for a lethal injection. The proposal Gardner filed Wednesday would only allow patients to take self-administered medication.

Under the law, an adult resident of Washington state must consult a physician, then make a verbal request for lethal medication. The patient’s request would kick off a waiting period of at least 15 days. A patient would then be required to sign a written request for the medication, then wait at least 48 hours before a prescription for the medication is written.

Gardner is a driving force for the initiative and the most recognizable face among supporters.

The former Democratic governor suffers from Parkinson’s disease. He was diagnosed shortly after he left office in 1993 following a second term. Effects of the disease could be seen Wednesday in the deliberateness with which he spoke and moved.

Gardner said he has a personal understanding of how those with terminal illnesses feel they’re losing all power as their condition deteriorates. The act would restore some of their lost autonomy, he said.

His condition is not terminal, so he could not use the law to end his life. But he has said the Death with Dignity Act should be a first step in a series of laws that would ultimately allow anyone with incurable illnesses that severely affect their quality of life to choose to kill themselves.

The proposal states that a physician should recommend that a patient notify next of kin before taking action, but that a request for assisted suicide cannot be denied if a patient declines to notify his or her family. Gardner said he expects his son, Doug, to campaign against the measure. Doug Gardner attended part of Wednesday’s news conference but made no public statements.

Other opponents promised that the proposal will face a fierce fight. Joelle Brouner, a member of Washington Not Yet Dead, a group that’s formed to oppose the measure, said voters should not be misled. Voters who support the proposal would be accepting death as “a progressive health-care policy,” she said.

But people who work closely with terminally ill patients say the issue isn’t black and white.

Helene Starks, an assistant professor at the University of Washington’s medical history and ethics department, said some terminally ill patients in Washington state already choose to end their own lives through discontinuing medication or refusing food and water.

Starks interviewed terminally ill patients in the Pacific Northwest for a study and found that none of the patients wanted to die, but were forced to face that fact and find a way to deal with it on their own terms.

Having the ability to hasten their death, if they chose to do so, “gave them the little piece of insurance, the safety net, that made the dying process more tolerable to them,” Starks said.

Patients, even those who are terminally ill with rapidly deteriorating bodies, aren’t likely to want to kill themselves if they’re properly cared for, said Karin Dufault, executive director of the Supportive Care Coalition based in Portland, Ore.

“We believe that by providing excellence in palliative care, by managing all symptoms and attending to psychosocial and spiritual needs, that the need of having physician-assisted suicide becomes moot,” she said.

Often, it is a fear of physical and psychological suffering that fuels the desire to commit suicide, Dufault said. If that suffering is managed through adequate care, patients are much more likely to await a natural death, she said.

The Death with Dignity Act could lead to widespread euthanasia even to those not terminally ill, said Larry Stickney, executive director of the Family Policy Institute, a conservative Christian organization affiliated with Focus on the Family.

“We’re here to say, ‘No, we’re not going down this path,’ ” he said. “We will be robust in our opposition.”

Evangelical Christians are more likely than mainline Protestants to oppose right-to-die and physician-assisted suicide measures, said Caroll Doherty, who studied the issue for the Pew Research Center in 2005 and 2006.

The center’s study revealed that most Christians, whether Catholic, Protestant or evangelical, support right-to-die measures, but that those groups are sharply divided when it comes to physician-assisted suicide.

“The issue is in who actually administers the lethal dose,” he said.

Reporter Krista J. Kapralos: 425-339-3422 or kkapralos@heraldnet.com.

The initiative

Details of the proposed Washington Death with Dignity Act