Last August, my mother died. She was 81 going on 50, full of life, and a fun person who lived her life to the fullest. The doctors discovered she had cancer throughout her little body, and a few months later she was gone. She was in great pain and wasted away in front of her loving family and her countless friends.

I choose not to go this way. If I’m terminal, I want to decide when I am finished with the suffering, to be able to choose when and how I make my exit. And I certainly don’t want my children and grandchildren to watch me die by agonizing inches.

The Catholic Church, conservative Christians and the right-to-life zealots are putting out misinformation and outright lies about Initiative 1000, the Washington Death with Dignity Initiative. Scare tactics are being used to frighten people into voting against end-of-life choices.

The Oregon Death with Dignity Act has been working for more than a decade without abuse or incident. The law’s safeguards work in Oregon, and they will work properly in Washington as well. Patients must be mentally competent, diagnosed with six months or less to live by two doctors, and make their request both orally and in writing, before witnesses, and are subject to a waiting period.

Please don’t allow religious doctrine to dictate our laws. In America we are supposed to have a separation of church and state. Let’s keep it that way. floods