Over the weekend, the editorial board at the Oregonian published an editorial claiming that the fears of critics of Oregon’s assisted suicide law appear to be unfounded. Nevertheless, the editors of the Oregonian don’t endorse the Washington attempt to legalize assisted suicide.
Confused?
So, apparently, is the editorial board at the Oregonian:
Ten years’ experience with Oregon’s one-of-a-kind Death With Dignity Act has shown that our deepest concerns were unfounded. Safeguards built into the law appear to be working.
Terminally ill people from other states have not flocked to Oregon to commit suicide, and Oregonians themselves are not using the law in large numbers. It has not targeted the disabled as feared, nor has it steamrollered vulnerable people into taking their lives.
But…
On the negative side, Oregon’s physician-assisted suicide program has not been sufficiently transparent. Essentially, a coterie of insiders run the program, with a handful of doctors and others deciding what the public may know. We’re aware of no substantiated abuses, but we’d feel more confident with more sunlight on the program. (Emphasis added.)
Given the statement about the lack of transparency and the closed shop “running the program,” shouldn’t they say that they really can’t say tell if the fears of abuses were unfounded? At the very least, promoters have fallen far short of their original promise to bring what they claimed was a widespread secretive practice into the light.
For what it’s worth, here’s the reason they give for opposing the Washington state initiative:
Our fundamental objection is the same it has always been — that’s it’s wrong to use physicians and pharmacists to hasten patients’ deaths.
That’s fine as far as it goes. But given the harsh critique of how the program is run, they could have done a far better job of informing the public discussion of this policy issue. That critique is literally begging for longer analysis of the failure of Oregon to provide the transparency, openness and accountability that was originally promised.
I always thought that one of the things the press was supposed to do was hound overnment and bureaucracies when openness and accountability fall short.
Apparently, that one sentence is as far as the Oregonian is willing to go. –Stephen Drake