Now that physician-assisted suicide is the law in Washington state, advocates in other areas see an opportunity.

Voters in Washington last week OK’d protections for doctors who write lethal prescriptions by a 58 to 42 percent margin.

That makes Washington the second state, after Oregon, to allow the controversial practice.

Now a retired doctor in British Columbia backs a similar bill on his side of the border.

“I’ve seen many people suffer through a very uncomfortable death which could have been prevented,” Dr. Brian Finnemore told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Under the Washington and Oregon laws, terminally-ill people can be prescribed lethal medication which they can administer themselves if doctors say they are of sound mind and have six months or less to live.

An organization has been created in Quebec to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide.

The Supreme Court of Canada struck down the move for assisted suicide when it ruled in 1994 that Victoria resident Sue Rodriguez, who had Lou Gehrig’s disease, could not end her life. Any change to that ruling would now have to come from the Canadian federal officials.

Some euthanasia activists, like Ted Goodwin of the Final Exit Network, are pushing to expand the Oregon and Washington State statutes. Many want doctors and others to be able to administer the drugs.

Opponents of assisted suicide in Washington were outspent 12 to 1, with much money coming from out of state. Backers of I-1000 got the bulk of their outsider cash from Oregon, California, New York and Florida.

Voters who considered themselves religious voted 50-50.

“It was a great victory for Washingtonians and Oregonians,” says George Eighmey, executive director of Compassion and Choices of Oregon, which helps patients use the assisted-suicide law.

“The efforts and perseverance of thousands of Washingtonians succeeded in allowing the citizens of Washington access to a full range of end of life options. Washington and Oregon can now show the rest of the nation that the option of aid-in-dying improves the quality of life for all terminally ill people and allows them to exit on their own terms.”

Those who oppose assisted suicide are now fearing for the people of Washington.

“They now are truly in danger of being medically killed,” says Dr. Chuck Bentz, a leader of Portland-based Physicians for Compassionate Care.

“That’s my biggest worry. The big problem is for those people who are being coerced, those people who are depressed, those people who are vulnerable.”

Dr. Bentz says the next step should be “truth in labeling.”

Patients should know, he says, whether they are getting involved with a doctor who takes a role in having patients kill themselves.

“We need to separate out those who will from those who won’t,” he explains.
There is access to the pledge on the website www.take-the-pledge.com.

Studies cited by opponents of assisted suicide show problems with the Oregon law.

Patients’ long-time physicians are pushed aside and doctors with minimal knowledge of the patient write the legal overdoses of barbiturates.

Researchers at Oregon Health and Science University recently said one-fourth of the people killed in assisted suicides in Oregon were depressed but mental health treatment seems to be shirked in favor of lethal drugs.

None of the patients who died in 2007 were referred for mental health evaluations.

Elections present challenge

In addition to the result on assisted suicide in Washington state, the election of a Democratic president and boosts in Democrats in Congress present the pro-life movement’s “stiffest challenge in decades,” says George Weigel, a Catholic scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

“The first order of business is the defeat of the federal Freedom of Choice Act, which would obliterate the legal achievements of the pro-life movement over the past thirty-five years, while creating grave problems of conscience for Catholic health care professionals,” Weigel explains. “If FOCA cannot be defeated in Congress, then it must be legally challenged in the federal courts. Barring a successful resistance to FOCA, the Catholic health care system as we know it will not exist in 10 years.”