Seattle, Wash., Sep 19, 2008 / 03:34 am
Critics of a proposed assisted suicide initiative in Washington state have charged that it is part of a strategy to legalize assisted suicide throughout the country. Arguing that the passage of Initiative 1000, also called the “Washington Death with Dignity Act,” would make doctors into killers, they argue the bill lacks mental health safeguards and claim its adoption into law would also reverse longstanding beliefs that suicide is a tragedy.
Rita L. Marker, executive director of the Steubenville-based International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, argued in an article on the American Thinker website that assisted suicide advocates had believed Oregon’s adoption of an assisted suicide measure in 1994 would be followed by similar laws in other states.
When other states failed to pass laws, Marker reported, the Portland, Oregon-based Death with Dignity National Center and the group Compassion & Choices, which was formerly known as the Hemlock Society, in 2005 organized a plan called "Oregon plus One."
“It is based on the premise that, if just one more state follows Oregon's lead, then other states will fall in line,” Marker wrote, saying that assisted suicide activists selected Washington state as a target for their advocacy.