When Tim Eyman files an new initiative, his buddy in the AG’s office, Jim Pharris, pretty much lets Tim write the ballot title himself, and that’s how the initiative is generally described in the press, because you know, it’s printed on the ballot that way, and you wouldn’t want to confuse voters. But when hundreds of volunteers work for months to get a grassroots initiative on the ballot, the ballot title suddenly isn’t good enough for the style-setters at the AP.
The AP has decided to refer to I-1000 as the “assisted suicide” measure, which not only is the term everybody knows polls the absolute worst, it is also completely inaccurate. And confusing, because there is no “assisted suicide” measure on the ballot. I-1000, which backers refer to as the “Death with Dignity” initiative, will appear on the ballot with the following title:
Ballot Title
Initiative Measure No. 1000 concerns allowing certain terminally ill competent adults to obtain lethal prescriptions.This measure would permit terminally ill, competent, adult Washington residents, who are medically predicted to have six months or less to live, to request and self-administer lethal medication prescribed by a physician. Should this measure be enacted into law? Yes [ ] No [ ]
Opponents wanted the ballot title to contain the phrase “assisted suicide” but a judge determined the wording would be intentionally pejorative, which I can only assume is why the AP decided to use it. And since the AP sets the standard for most other news organizations in the state, that’s how this measure is going to be described to voters. It’s like handing the measure’s opponents a million bucks in free advertising, and the folks at the AP know it.
Impartial, fair and balanced objectivity… my ass.
I’m in favor of this measure for most of the reasons argued on this blog, and I agree that the AP has used a value-laden description. That said, isn’t “Death with Dignity” also a value-laden way to describe the initiative? The measure provides a choice for those of us who would want it, not “dignity” per se. Depends on how you define “dignity.”
What’s the best, most neutral, descriptive phrase that the AP and others could/should use?
Spin has replaced the precision that never did exist in our political speach.
It took me YEARS to figure uot whther “right to life” meant pro or anti abortion.
Lee and I have an ongoing debate about the term “medical marijuana” since the FDA cannot authorize use of an undefined plant material as a drug.
We all know and love “death taxes” and would prefer to hire an undocumented alien rather than an illegal immigrant.
Of course, sometimes these neologism mean ntohing at all as in “compassionate conservative.”
Recently I have read that John McCain is not “old” he is “experienced.” Chrisitne Gregoire is a talented administrator rather than a poor politician.
This may be a new hobby, collecting spin!
The Korean Police Action
people of color
border security
war on drugs
intelligent design
the trinity
pagan
judeo-christianity
joy stick
raising taxes
lowering taxes
patriotism
@1
1. be careful, the devil is in the details. This law may do as much harm as it does good.
2. The problme here is that while suicide is a pejorative, I-1000 IS an effort to leglaize a form of suicide.
How about
Choice of Life
YellowPup @1,
Why should the measure need to be described with a pithy catchphrase? Why not just use the wording in the ballot title? The AP could describe it as such:
Is that so hard?
I was skeptical of this initiative at first thinking it might motivate some people to vote Republican throwing some tight races the wrong way.
But these days it seems it’s impossible for anything to cause anyone who isn’t brainwashed already to vote Republican.
Based on the Oregon experience I’m inclined to support it but I’m still undecided.
Hopefully every right winger who votes against this will not only themselves be forced to endure long, drawn out and painful deaths – but hopefully their relatives will as well. They deserve pain and suffering when they vote for it.
@4…Goldy…
Why say in 14 words what you can say in two?
“Assisted suicide” is what is described, and that is what it is – live with it…or not as the case may be.
The Piper
But these days it seems it’s impossible for anything to cause anyone who isn’t brainwashed already to vote Republican.
See 7 unless of course he “prefers G.O.P. Party”.
If I-1000 fails, you still have the option of blowing your brains out. It’s quick and painless if you do it right — probably more so than any prescription. Who cares if suicide-by-gun is against the law? What can they do to you? Throw you in jail?
Personally, I think it makes more sense to blow Republicans’ brains out, but … hey, I’m just kidding! That’s a joke, wingnut fucktards! Whatsamatter, you stuffed shirts got no sense of humor? Ann Coulter thinks jokes about murdering political opponents are funny, and it gets big applause lines from her audiences, so why can’t I try it too? hahahaha …
A suggestion ..
I would wait before deciding how to vote to hear the opinions the medical societies and NGO’s devoted to care of the elderly and disabled.
As I have written elsewhere in HA, I certainly suppor the right to die (although I too do not know how best to spin words).
What I am not convinced of is that there is a real need .. ie that people like Booth Gardner currently have all that much difficulty getting help that leads to their deaths. Rather I suspect that I-100 may simply legalize practices that are already wide spread.
That would be OK too, if there were not the spectre of I-1000 making it MORE difficult for people to get help. The Oregon law has a number of provisions that could be invoked to greatly complicate terminal care in hospitals and prevent a lot of consensual death now.
Much of this comes under the medical question of supporting life vs assuaging illness. A drug the relieves anxiety, for example, may facilitate a patients decision that she does not want to die. Under the terms of the Oregon law, permission to die might depend on the patient agreeing t take a mood altering drug!
In fact, it is very common for terminal patients to need to choose between their ability to fend of impending death and their own comfort. This very difficult decsion may be made by the patient with his doctor, by the doctor alone if the patient is unconscious, with the family, or even with other interested dparties such as the courts or a clergyman. The divders interest surrounding the choice to die make it difficult to imagine a lwa that might not restrict some one’s rights.
I am a Jeffersonian and like ol Tom (who reportedly considered suicide after his wife died), I am anything but convinced that adding a formal bureaucracy would make it easier.
Personally, I wold favor a simpler law that legalizes suicide. If people want to die why shouldn;t they be allwed to do so? If anything, I worry that I-1000 might decrease a right that is implied by th 4th amendment.
The best argument I have heard for I-1000 is that has doine no hark in Oregon. That may be true bit we also have no data that the law hac changed to number of people undergoing voluntary death in Oregon.
All in all I favor not making new laws if do not have demonstable need for them. As I sais, I will wait to decide and hope that others wiht more information chip in.
SJ
If a practice is prevalent (such as assisted suicide) it happens whether Tim Eyeman wants it to or not. No law is going to change that –any more than making abortion illegal will make abortions happen with less frequency.
It does give punishers and naysayers like Tim Eyeman and Jesse Helms a lifetime’s worth of people to harrass and victimize.
Piper, it is not assisted suicide, and the court confirmed that. The drugs are self-administered. The measure merely makes it legal for a doctor to prescribe a fatal dosage, under certain limited conditions, and for the patient to use it.
@4: Ok, d’oh, yes. Journalistic convention becomes habit of thought at a certain point, I guess.
Were I a journalist, as a rule, I’d want to avoid being accused of euphemism or undue neutrality, that’s all–just as we discuss here often, on issues like Creationism vs. science. It’s unfortunate that journalistic sensitivity about this kind of thing usually errs on the side of avoiding offense to the professional initiative writers and political think tanks rather than the grassroots, as you say.
You propose a better convention for reporting on this and other initiatives in general.
@13…Goldy…
Well if that isn’t assisting in a sucicide – ergo, assited suicide – then I don’t know what is.
Why not have the “doctor” just give the “patient” a gun instead – effectively the same thing.
The Piper
and the court confirmed that.
Take it to the Judge pooper. I bet he laughs, smacks down the gavel – DISMISSED!
LOL..
“Assisted suicide” seems like an appropriate description to me. Intentionally ending one’s life by ingestion or injection of lethal substances is definitely suicide. And this process is assisted by a physician providing a prescription for these lethal substances and medical advice on how the patient can administer these lethal substances most effectively.
Why use a dozen words in a newspaper article, when two words will suffice?
At the same time, it makes sense to more fully describe the process on the ballot. The law allows 10 words for the brief ballot title, and 30 words for the ballot question description. Why use two words, when 30 words are available?
Pooper give me the name of your doctor and I’ll give him the gun!
Let me point out once more that to a degree we’ve already “crossed the chasm” via what’s become more or less standard procedure in treatment of the terminally ill. Most of the time the focus shifts from “prolonging life” to “providing comfort” (or more correctly, reducing discomfort). This is typically done by administering morphine, increasing the dose as the patient’s distress becomes apparent. Generally the result is that the patient is pretty well sedated as the end draws near. Morphine, like most opiates, significantly depresses respiration, so in most circumstances (especially when heart and/or respiratory disease is involved), there’s no question whatsoever that this hastens death.
Assisted “suicide” might be considered an extension of the “living will” concept, or granting durable power of attorney for medical purposes to another party, either of which allows the patient, while still conscious and competent, to specify that “no extraordinary measures” be taken to extend life when the patient is not longer able to make those wishes known.
Either way, what it mainly does is get the caregivers off the hook, so we don’t have thousands of fiascos like the Terri Schiavo incident.
The more appropriate alleged media bias would be if newspaper articles referred ONLY to “assisted suicide” without providing any details about how the process works.
So can anyone show any newspaper or AP articles that simply call I-1000 “assisted suicide”, without describing the process with fair details?
@17: But there is no assisted aspect, the patient has to take the drug him/herself.
The patient has to qualify, ask for the drugs, and then take the drugs. There are other safeguards built in to avoid institutional abuse and coercion.
I think in the Kevorkian case of the 1990s, which gave rise to the “assisted suicide” concept, Kevorkian administered the drugs to a patient himself, through an injection, and this is why he went to jail. I-1000 doesn’t allow doctors to do that.
how about “facilitated suicide”.
I don’t care how they spin it: I’ll vote “yes” for I-1000 in November.
re 19: Well said, ArtFart. Another problem with the word ‘suicide’ in these kinds of proposals is that insurance companies are off the hook for life-insurance if there is a suicide (commision of a crime and all).
As with many things in this life, conservative morality more often than not has a dollar-sign propping it up instead of A PLASTIC JESUS. It brings to mind the lament of Tom DeLay that all of the abortions in the U.S. had done nothing but force the members of his ‘class’ to import cheap labor.
Whoops! There’s that dollar-sign again! Murder of the unborn is what he really meant (heh!). Now, they’re trying to prevent the ‘murder’ of the Living Dead. Think of all the money pissed away by not keeping a fatally ill person alive by government fiat for a few more months.
24 Agreed, Lucy. The worst-case outcome of this sort of debate is a grotesque ethical collision between the health insurer that doesn’t want to pay for protracted care and the life insurer looking for an excuse not to pay the death benefit.
It gets really kinky when both are potentially the same corporation.
I’m not sure exactly where Jesus (“plastic” or not) comes into the discussion here. The religious right presumably gets its justification for butting into the debate from the Old Testament, namely the Sixth Commandment (or the Fifth, if you’re Catholic): Thou Shalt Not Kill. Apparently to some of these folks, this is to be rigidly applied to foetuses and vegetative invalids, but not to felons or people in other countries they’ve decided they don’t like. In any case, it doesn’t seem to have much to do with Jesus’ principal message, namely “love thy God”, and “love thy neighbor”.
re 25: I thought a plastic Jesus would be a sturdier prop. Strictly and Biblicly speaking, you are correct, Jesus was just a prophesy at the time.
Yellow Pup @ 21
Jack Kevorkian went to prison for MURDER, not for ASSISTED SUICIDE. Kevorkian was an activist. He helped with many assisted suicides, where the intended deceased had to administer the lethal drugs themselves. He thought this was not enough, and started personally administering the lethal drugs. He even videotaped this and publicly distributed the tape. He was then convicted of second degree murder, and sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison.
Interestingly enough, Kevorkian was granted an early parole from prison on June 1, 2007, based on the grounds that he was terminally ill and supposedly had less than one year to live. However, Kevorkian has yet to “practice what he preaches”. If Kevorkian does decide to end his own life because of his terminal illness, it should definitely make the headlines.
If you oppose I-985, please join the NO on I-985 group on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group......038;ref=nf
And tell your friends!
It is a sorrowful experience to have to witness a parent or loved-one, stalwart and strong not so long ago, slowly wither to the point of death. As valiant as their struggle against the ‘dying of the light’ may have been, there is a point at which it becomes obvious that they are on death’s door.
To have Tim Eyeman insert his smart-alecky bullshit into this solemn affair is an affront to both liberal and conservative alike. Someone needs to teach that boy some manners. He obviously never had a strong male figure in his life to model himself upon.
Maybe a better term for what we’re talking about would be “accelerated death”, or “departure by appointment”.
AP has become the FOX news for the rubes.
@27
Richard,
First of all, Dr. Kevorkian has never murdered anyone in his life. Every single patient who came to him desired to have their life ended. Calling that murder cheapens what murder should mean. Someone who is killing people against their will shouldn’t be compared to someone who is assisting others in ending their own lives.
Second, this may be the most illogical thing I’ve ever seen you write:
Interestingly enough, Kevorkian was granted an early parole from prison on June 1, 2007, based on the grounds that he was terminally ill and supposedly had less than one year to live. However, Kevorkian has yet to “practice what he preaches”. If Kevorkian does decide to end his own life because of his terminal illness, it should definitely make the headlines.
This is the equivalent to saying that a woman who is pro-choice MUST have an abortion in order to “practice what she preaches.” You’ve managed to adopt the faulty belief that many of Kevorkian’s opponents have (I lived in Michigan in the mid-90s when this was happening) that Kevorkian was encouraging people to end their lives. He never did that. Many people lied in order to claim he did. And they were lying for similar reasons as the many I-1000 opponents who are lying today.
@32 Well, there’s the vernacular definition of “murder,” and the legal definition, which aren’t necessarily the same, as Dr. K found out …
Lee @ 32
You see Doctor Kevorkian as some sort of saint. Some of the cases where Kevorkian assisted suicides (or actively killed people) show the kinds of abuses and outrages possible if assisted suicide is allowed.
For example, Marjorie Wantz, 58, had a case of incurable genital warts. The disease was painful, but certainly not fatal or terminal in any way. Kevorkian helped her commit suicide after being requested by her husband, talking extensively with him, and then asking her a few perfunctory questions.
Kevorkian helped end the life of at least one woman, 39-year-old Rebecca Badger, who was a mentally troubled drug abuser and had no physical disease.
Janet Adkins had been treated by Dr. Murray Raskind, a psychiatrist at the University of Washington Hospital in Seattle, and a nationally recognized expert on aging and Alzheimer’s. Raskind told Kevorkian that Adkins was not competent to make a life-and-death decision. Kevorkian gave her a lethal injection anyway, writing later that his opinion was based solely on conversations with Adkins’ husband.
In at least 17 instances, Kevorkian’s first meeting with the person was also his last. In at least five of these, less than three hours passed from the signing of the request to the moment of death. In one case, the waiting period was one hour.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.....007/NEWS05
Doctor Kevorkian really isn’t the topic here, excepting that there were really no safeguards in place to ensure that the person dying was actually competent and not under coercion.
While the I-1000 proponents point to language in the law that requires such safeguards, the Oregon experience is that the language is ineffective, and the restrictions are rather simple to bypass.
Unless and until some provision that prevents “doctor shopping” to get the desired answer is made, there will be abuses. My suggestion is for an unbiased “patient advocate”, but I’m sure that there are other ways to do the same thing.
In some laws, we consider abuses to be simply part of the cost of having laws. The medical marijuana laws were brought up in an earlier thread, and it is generally acknowledged that some medical marijuana is smoked simply to get high. That’s an acceptable price to pay so that cancer patients can relieve some of the problems with chemotherapy.
Allowing a child to coerce an elderly parent into suicide is not. Allowing an insurance company to refuse therapy, but pay for assisted suicide is not. Prescribing lethal medication to a clinically depressed person is not.
Or, perhaps to some folks, it is. Maybe mom would rather die earlier and leave more money to the kids. Maybe it’s better for society to refuse to pay for expensive, marginally effective treatments and encourage those patients to “check out” a little earlier. Maybe we should go along with the clinically depressed individual that would rather die than get better.
Maybe, but then we should write the law that way and debate it that way.
No, Lee, most of the opponents of this law are not lying. Some of us are not even opposed to the concept.
But this law, as written is unacceptable. People’s lives are at stake here. This needs to be done right, or not at all.
@34
Richard,
How many of the people that Kevorkian helped to commit suicide did not wish to end their own lives?
Yes, what Kevorkian did would still not be legal under I-1000 (and in some cases, he even made shortcuts on his own guidelines), but there’s absolutely zero proof that Kevorkian murdered anyone against their own will. None.
@35
Unless and until some provision that prevents “doctor shopping” to get the desired answer is made, there will be abuses.
Under the current system, the kinds of people who would be doctor shopping are not sitting around going “if only I could find a doctor who could help me die with dignity?” They’re finding other ways to end their own lives. Have you checked to see if overall suicide rates in Oregon went up since their law was passed?
Lee
No, but I wouldn’t expect them to regardless. Of course, the fact that in the case of assisted suicide, no mention of that is made on the death certificates, and by Oregon state policy, the records are unavailable.
So, unfortunately, we are left with nothing more than anecdotal evidence to work with.
There have been cases where the family doctor refused to prescribe the lethal medication, and the proponents of assisted suicide promptly assisted the individual to find another doctor.
There are disagreements about the reasons that another doctor was appropriate.
“Doctor shopping” in order to get a desired result is more common than most people know, and the organizations supporting assisted suicide in Oregon have doctors immediately available that have been willing to provide lethal medication without developing a normal doctor-patient relationship.
Don’t get me wrong. My only serious objection to this law is that there is no provision to ensure that the patient is actually of sound mind and not under coercion. The restrictions in the Oregon law, and in this law are essentially toothless.
There have been reports of patients being prescribed lethal medication after being diagnosed as clinically depressed. There have been reports of patients being prescribed lethal medication after licenced social workers noted what they believed was coercion from immediate family members. There have been insurance companies that refused treatment, but offered lethal medication.
The Oregon law has been around for several years, and some problems have shown up. This is not surprising with regards to any relatively new area of law.
So, why aren’t we trying to learn from those problems and deal with them? Why do we insist on making the same mistakes as Oregon?
@37
There have been cases where the family doctor refused to prescribe the lethal medication, and the proponents of assisted suicide promptly assisted the individual to find another doctor.
And as I’ve said, in Washington today, people who are in this situation are just not going to any doctors in the first place. This initiative does not open up any situations where a person who wasn’t at risk for a suicide is now at greater risk for a suicide. This is similar to the argument that some were trying to make a while back saying that putting up a barrier on Aurora Ave will stop suicides.
Today, in all 50 states, doctors quietly prescribe lethal doses to patients in ways that technically violate the law. There are unscrupulous doctors in all 50 states. This initiative cannot fix that problem. All it can do is provide a legal avenue for the patients who are of sound mind to end their own lives, and to legally shield the doctors who’ve been prescribing lethal doses secretly. Most doctors will adhere to the requirements of any new law in order to prevent family members from convincing a mentally ill relative to kill himself against his/her will (because they were doing it already). Some will not. The law, again, does not make that problem worse, but it will bring it out more into the open.
Don’t get me wrong. My only serious objection to this law is that there is no provision to ensure that the patient is actually of sound mind and not under coercion. The restrictions in the Oregon law, and in this law are essentially toothless.
I don’t agree with this statement. I do believe the Oregon law has the sufficient restrictions, and until you can show me a specific case where someone was coerced into committing suicide who otherwise wouldn’t have been had the law not been in place, I have no reason to think otherwise.
@37
So, why aren’t we trying to learn from those problems and deal with them? Why do we insist on making the same mistakes as Oregon?
Give me the cases. My email is thehim66 at hotmail dot com. I guarantee you any case you discover from Oregon will be
a) Something that happens in Washington today
b) Unrelated to the law itself
I continue to get the sense that you expect this initiative to fix problems that it can not fix.