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Article: Doctors without borders: Washington state's new physician-assisted suicide law.(Short Takes)
- Article from:
- Commonweal
- Article date:
- January 30, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2009 Commonweal Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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By a vote of 59 percent to 41 percent on November 4, 2008, Washington State voters endorsed a ballot initiative to legalize physician-assisted suicide (PAS). If the final outcome was never much in doubt, the margin of victory was surprising. In 1991, an initiative in favor of euthanasia had been defeated in Washington. But this time Washington's proponents shifted to PAS. The assumption, a shrewd one, was that the public would be more willing to accept a patient's self-administered death than one directly carried out by a doctor.
What, if anything, are the national implications of the Washington vote? The answer to that question is unclear. When Oregon's PAS ...