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The Coalition Against Assisted Suicide includes doctors, nurses, hospice workers, Democrats, Republicans, minorities, members of the disability community, and people of diverse religious views. If you'd like to join us, click on the button below.

 

What We Believe

I-1000 isn't limited to terminally ill

Letters to the Editor
Melanie Lermusik
Seattle Times, Sept. 24, 2008
Source

Editor, The Times:

Regarding Carol Ostrom's article about I-1000, I agree with opponent Duane French that assisted suicide will not stop at the terminally ill ["How we die," Times, page one, Sept. 21].

Advocate Jack Leversee fears artificial life support and uses that as his argument for a right to lethal medication. But he already has the right to give advance directives on what kinds of artificial life support he does or doesn't want, should he become incapacitated and unable to speak for himself.

Were he to find himself in that situation, he would be unable to self-administer lethal medication anyway. That someone would have to do it for him represents the potential danger.

Gov. Booth Gardner says he wants to be able to control his exit when he "can no longer keep busy." There is a big difference between being able to keep busy and being diagnosed as terminally ill with six months to live.

The danger is that suicide medication will not be restricted to the terminally ill. Arguments for dispensing it to those who want to control their exit could easily turn into controlling the exits of the most vulnerable among us.

— Melanie Lermusik, Mukilteo

© 2008 Coalition Against Assisted Suicide - PO BOX 11794 - Olympia Washington 98508