Associated Press
SEATTLE — Dr. William Watts, an outspoken advocate for patients’ rights in choosing death with dignity and for abortion rights, is dead at 85.
Watts, a third-generation physician and former president of the Washington State Medical Association who taught many aspiring young doctors at Swedish Medical Center, died May 12 of pneumonia.
Watts was born in Chicago and reared in Seattle, attended the University of Washington and obtained his medical degree at Harvard University.
During World War II, his hearing was permanently damaged by a kamikaze attack while he was serving as a Navy doctor aboard the USS Haggard in the South Pacific
As an internist practicing next to the chancery of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle, he championed a state abortion rights law that was one of the country’s most liberal before the Supreme Court legalized abortion nationwide in 1973.
Elected president of the state medical association in 1970, he also was a leading public advocate of provisions to let terminally ill patients and their close relatives disconnect or refuse life support systems.
Dr. Rick Johnson, who practiced medicine with Watts for seven years and later served as head of the association, said Watts almost single-handedly changed it from a passive, on-the-sidelines group into a politically active organization.
Survivors include his wife of 62 years, Kay; sons Ted, John, Bill, Dave and Raleigh; sister Katherine "Dickie" Sinnitt; and 10 grandchildren. At his request, no service is planned.
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