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With next week's petition deadline just around the corner, backers of an initiative that would allow a lethal drug overdose as a medical treatment option are increasing their signature-gathering efforts around the state, including Central Washington. At the same time, Yakima Valley churches, particularly the Roman Catholic Church, are countering the campaign with their own education and awareness crusades. "Initiative 1000 is an attack on our most fundamental beliefs and teaching, and placing it on the November ballot would contradict our proclamation of the gospel of life," the Most Rev. Carlos Sevilla, bishop of the Diocese of Yakima, said in a recent memo. ~Snip~ The initiative comes two years after the death of Terri Schiavo, the 41-year-old brain-damaged woman who became the centerpiece of a national right-to-die battle. Doctors removed a feeding tube that had sustained Schiavo for more than a decade over the objections of her family, who had tried to get the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the action. Schiavo's husband was her guardian and maintained she would not have wanted to continue in a "persistent vegetative state." I-1000 is closely modeled after an Oregon law that was approved by voters in 1994 and took effect in 1997. Washington's proposal would let doctors prescribe lethal doses of narcotics to terminally ill patients who ask to end their own lives. Patients would self-administer the drugs........
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Six-term U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, congressman in District 19, which includes portions of South County, has released his new book, “Fire-Breathing Liberal.”
It is subtitled: “How I Learned to Survive (and Thrive) in the Contact Sport of Congress.”
Wexler offers frank view of a number of issues, from the butterfly ballot of the 2000 presidential election to the Terri Schiavo case to what he calls “FEMA’s incompetence in dealing with hurricane damage.”
The congressman is a member of the House Judiciary, Foreign Affairs and Finance Services Committees. He was named “Most Valuable Congressman” by “The Nation” in 2007, and one of the “50 Most Effective Legislators in Congress” by “Congressional Quarterly.” The book was co-written by David Fisher, an author and journalist who recently co-authored William Shatner’s memoir, “Up Till Now.”
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