Washington's I-119

Abstract

In the beginning, Washington state's Death with Dignity initiative seemed charmed. Everything went right, to an extent that amazed even its most optimistic supporters. Up until the final week before the 5 November election, it appeared almost certain that Initiative would pass, making Washington the first place in the world to legalize voluntary euthanasia for the terminally ill. Volunteers easily gathered the 150,001 signatures required to place the measure on the ballot. In fact, they did so with three months to spare. Ralph Mero, president of the Hemlock Society of Washington State and the man who wrote the first draft of the initiative, collected 1,200 signatures in a single July weekend with the aid of one volunteer. In January, I-119 supporters triumphantly presented the secretary of state with eleven storage boxes stuffed with 223,000 signatures, nearly 50 percent more than necessary. Physician aid-in-dying, they declared, was a mandate from the people. Money poured into campaign headquarters from 26,000 individual contributors. Four thousand people sent in checks for $5 or less, many with poignant, handwritten notes attached. Public opinion polls were positive. Surveys consistently showed that roughly two out of three Washington voters favored the concept of voluntary euthanasia. The results held, with only minor variation, for every age group and every geographic area of the state. Meanwhile, those struggling to defeat I-119 appeared to be in disarray. The opponents' coalition, 119 Vote was an uncomfortable union, bringing together born-again Christians, various right-to-life groups, the Catholic Church and - belatedly - the Washington State Medical Association. Members bickered over details, had little money, no apparent campaign strategy and, in short, appeared to be fighting a losing battle. One week after Labor Day, less than two months before the election, the Vote No! campaign office did not even have a listed telephone number. Yet when the votes were counted, Initiative failed by a decisive margin, having received just 46 percent of 1.5 million votes cast. The story of the I-119 is a fascinating one because it tested, for the first time, what would happen if this most difficult of ethical dilemmas were put to a popular vote. Campaign strategists found themselves in uncharted territory, faced with the task of reducing complicated philosophical arguments to compelling sound bytes. The campaign was gripping because it was argued with such urgency and passion. Both sides campaigned with the heartfelt conviction that they were making a stand for the good of mankind. Each side viewed the other with a degree of contempt and disbelief that is remarkable in American politics. Some of the most moving arguments were literally made from the deathbed. The arguments were washed in the glare of television lights from as far away as Japan, Germany, and Brazil, and brought a steady flow of ethicists, theologians, high-profile doctors, and assorted extremists from outside the state. As much as anything else, the final outcome of the election turned on external circumstances: a best-selling book, a damning suicide note, the wealth of the Catholic Church, and the excesses of a deranged doctor. Why Washington? During the campaign, it was sometimes suggested that Initiative was the product of some powerful cabal, that cunning strategists of the international right-to-die movement had targeted Washington as the most likely place in the world to insert the thin end of the euthanasia wedge. That wasn't the way it happened. Members of the local Hemlock Society were instrumental in getting things moving, and the language of the initiative was clearly influenced by the Hemlock-sponsored referendum in California, which failed to gather enough signatures to appear on the ballot there in 1988. …