Initiative Seeks Law to Let Physicians Assist in Suicides : Health: The measure would protect doctors from prosecution for aiding in the deaths of terminally ill patients who want to die.

A law under consideration in Washington state would give dying people more power to end their lives with the help of their physicians, who could not be tried for murder for assisting suicides.

Proponents of the initiative say it has been buoyed by the publicity surrounding the case of a Michigan doctor who may be charged with murder for providing a sick woman with the means to kill herself.

“Just let her go peacefully!” pleaded Mildred Scherneck, in tears as she thought of her hospitalized 97-year-old mother. “It isn’t that I want to lose her, but when a person gets like she is, they shouldn’t let her live.”

Scherneck had just signed a citizens initiative known as the Death With Dignity Initiative, which would be the first legalizing assisted suicide.

More than 104,000 people statewide have signed Initiative 119 since the campaign began May 3. Organizers have until Dec. 31 to gather 150,001 valid signatures to get the initiative on the 1991 ballot if the Legislature does not approve it first.

“We are very confident that we will make it,” said Karen Cooper, the initiative’s campaign coordinator. “We are finding that, clearly, the citizens of Washington are ready for this law.”

“If you’re in sound mind, you should be able to make that decision (to die). I think it’s our God-given right,” said Muriel Boyd, who signed the petition because she had to watch her father die painfully of cancer 11 years ago.

The initiative would amend the state’s 1979 Natural Death Act to expand a terminally ill but mentally competent adult’s right to die.

It defines a “terminal condition” as one in which two physicians say in writing that a patient has no more than six months to live or is in an irreversible coma or a persistent vegetative state.

It would redefine “life-sustaining measures” to include artificial hydration and nutrition.

It adds a unique aid-in-dying provision, defined as “a medical service provided in person by a physician that will end the life of a conscious and mentally competent qualified patient in a dignified, painless and humane manner, when requested voluntarily by the patient through a written directive executed at the time the medical service is desired . . . . “

At no time could aid in dying be administered at the request of anyone other than the patient.

Cooper said the publicity surrounding the assisted suicide of Janet Adkins in Michigan helped the initiative’s cause, although the initiative would not have applied to Adkins’ case.

Adkins, a Portland, Ore., resident who had been diagnosed last year with Alzheimer’s disease, killed herself outside Detroit on June 4 by using a suicide machine built by Dr. Jack Kevorkian. The machine injects a chemical that induces coma followed by another chemical that causes death.

Kevorkian has been barred by a Michigan court from using the machine while prosecutors decide whether they will try him.

However, last month authorities in Michigan charged a California man with murder for allegedly helping his cancer-stricken wife die at a motel. A Hemlock Society spokesman said the family flew to Michigan after learning of the Adkins case.

Cooper said Adkins would not have qualified for aid in dying under the measure because she was not terminally ill by its definition.

“This initiative does not in any way address or solve a lot of problems in the world. It addresses the needs of two groups of patients--individuals in permanent vegetative state and with no chance of recovery and those who are terminally ill who are mentally competent to make those decisions,” she said.

The Eugene, Ore.-based National Hemlock Society, a leading right-to-die group, is one of the main backers of the initiative, which has been endorsed by the state’s Democratic Party.

The initiative has been condemned by the Roman Catholic Church and the Republican Party platform is against the initiative.

“Asking doctors to kill undermines the moral integrity and confidence in a profession that heals, comforts and protects life,” Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen and Coadjutor Archbishop Thomas Murphy of Seattle said in a statement issued as the initiative campaign began.

The Seattle-based law firm Perkins Coie, which conducted a limited review of the measure, concluded that it would hold up in court for physicians assisting suicides under the specified conditions.

The measure states that anyone forging or concealing revocation of an aid in dying directive could be charged with first-degree murder.

In 1988, Californians tried to get a similar initiative on the ballot and failed. Fresh attempts are being made in California, Oregon and Florida, organizers said.

Initiative 119 is an initiative to the Legislature. The Legislature could pass it into law or propose an alternative, in which case the original initiative and the alternative would go onto the 1991 ballot. If the Legislature did nothing, the initiative would automatically go onto the 1991 ballot.