Posted on 01/10/2009 10:19:38 AM PST by wagglebee
Advocates of the new Washington law that will soon allow terminally ill patients to end their lives through lethal drugs expect Oregon's near-identical law to account for a record 55 deaths there in 2008.
A "very small number of people" probably will seek to use the law in its first year in Washington, said Robb Miller, executive director of Compassion & Choices of Washington, the state affiliate of the Portland-based group that advocates for what it calls "aid in dying."
Washington's Death With Dignity Act will take effect March 5. Washington voters approved Initiative 1000 to legalize the law in November. Washington would be the second state after Oregon to allow what opponents call "physician-assisted suicide."
Under the law, doctors could prescribe -- but not administer -- a lethal dose of medication if requested by Washington residents given six months or less to live.
The state Department of Health will hold a public hearing Feb. 10 on draft rules to implement the law, including reporting requirements for health care providers and the qualifications of witnesses for patients in long-term care facilities who make written requests for aid in dying.
Deaths attributed to Oregon's law in its first decade totaled 341, an average of 34 a year, with a high of 49 in 2007. Compassion & Choices volunteers have served as witnesses to deaths in about 85 percent of the cases.
The organization sees itself as the "steward of the law" and the "advocate and counselor" for those wishing to use the law in Washington, said Miller, one of several Compassion & Choices leaders who spoke Friday to reporters in Seattle.
About 40 of the deaths in Oregon involved patients whose doctors worked at hospitals, usually Catholic-run, that opposed aid in dying on moral grounds, said George Eighmey, executive director of Compassion & Choices of Oregon. (For the same reason, some pharmacists will not fill lethal prescriptions.)
In those cases, the doctors had to go away from the hospital during their off-duty hours to prescribe the lethal drugs, Eighmey said.
To avoid those hurdles, Miller and Eighmey said patients considering aid in dying at some point should not wait to find out their doctors' positions.
"The time for conversation is now," Miller said.
"Kill" means whatever believers say it does.
I think that believers are not really concerned much with judgments from non-Christians on what is Christian really is.
I don't see that someone who clearly hates Christianity is capable of a rational or accurate interpretation of Scripture.
Would you prefer to live in an atheist society or under an atheistic form of government? For example, one like the USSR (Stalin)? China? Cambodia? NK? Cuba?
Please notify me via FReepmail if you would like to be added to or taken off the Oregon Ping List.
God Himself may put a Christian in a situation - or permit him to be put in a situation - which is life-threatening. And He may miraculously save him, or He may bring him home.
But in every case, God's will is what matters, not ours. Emphasis mine:
...
And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and [of] Barak, and [of] Samson, and [of] Jephthae; [of] David also, and Samuel, and [of] the prophets: Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection: And others had trial of [cruel] mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented;
(Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and [in] mountains, and [in] dens and caves of the earth.
... -Hebrews 11
Amen!
HEY - OVER HERE!
Really, I know what you mean.
Speaking directly to the issue of state sanctioned assisted suicide, though, I always had two major problems.
First, I don't think laws ought to be made that change the definitions of common words, such as marriage or suicide. If a suicide is assisted, it is not really a suicide by definition. Here, the ingestion of a lethal dose of barbiturates is assisted (perhaps made possible) through the direct cooperation of both a doctor and a pharmacist providing those drugs to the patient. It is a professionally enabled, hastened death.
Second, as a sort of social libertarian, I'm not convinced a procedure like this ought to be either sanctioned or prohibited by the state. There was nothing to prevent the private arrangement of substantially the same thing before it became explicitly legal. The law as it stands now merely limits the practice to certain methods and circumstances.
Better to just leave well enough alone IMO.
I’ve lived in P’land and Eugene so I can say that! ;-)
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