California: Assisted suicide/euthanasia now the law

Bill is signed by the Catholic in-name-only Gov. Jerry Brown. More pressure on other states - like NY - to keep up with trendsetting California.

This is inevitable -as the Nazis said "useless eaters". from the last paragraph excerpted - This will help "stabilize the General Fund’s costs for Medi-Cal".

Ironically, the bill was passed during a special session of the California State Legislature, which was originally called to address cost savings for the state’s MediCal program. Indeed, there are many who would see doctor-prescribed suicide as a “cost-savings” measure.

Excerpts below - hit the link for the full tragedy.

In his signing message, Brown said he signed the bill because he wouldn’t want to be in pain in his final days — regardless of the fact that pain relief is readily available without killing patients.

The so-called ‘right-to-die’ movement promotes these laws as simply ‘another medical option’ at the end of life, but their real goal is euthanasia on demand for any reason.”

“There are no real safeguards. It is a well-established fact that nearly every terminally ill patient who desires death is suffering from treatable depression. In Oregon, fewer than 6% of patients have been referred for psychiatric evaluation before obtaining life-ending drugs. Rather than treat clinically depressed patients, the Oregon system, and the system that would be established by the California bill, indicates that you instead help the patients kill themselves,” Tobias noted.

Tim Rosales of Californians Against Assisted Suicide  also responded to the bill signing. He told LifeNews:

This is a dark day for California and for the Brown legacy. Governor Brown was clear in his statement that this was based on his personal background. As someone of wealth and access to the world’s best medical care and doctors the Governor’s background is very different than that of millions of Californians living in healthcare poverty without that same access – these are the people and families potentially hurt by giving doctors the power to prescribe lethal overdoses to patients. At this time the coalition of organizations opposing assisted suicide is reviewing at all of its options moving forward.

Ironically, the bill was passed during a special session of the California State Legislature, which was originally called to address cost savings for the state’s MediCal program. Indeed, there are many who would see doctor-prescribed suicide as a “cost-savings” measure. Writing about the bill’s passage in The New York Times, Ian Lovett included an observation by Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, director of the medical ethics program at the University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine:

…[Kheriaty] said that low-income and underinsured patients would inevitably feel pressure to end their own lives in some cases, when the cost of continued treatment would be astronomical compared with the cost of a few lethal pills.

Here's more -

Supporters of physician-assisted suicide, which were not successful in passing legislation during the regular session, exploited the special Medi-Cal session to advance their agenda behind closed doors. Legislation allowing doctors to prescribe lethal drugs is highly controversial and opposed by disability rights groups, hospitals, physicians’ groups, as well as by Life Legal Defense Foundation.

“We expect our state legislators to uphold the State Constitution and not bend the law to further their own ends,” said Life Legal Executive Director Alexandra Snyder, “Californians have a right to an open, deliberative, and transparent legislative process when it comes to law and policy changes that are literally a matter of life and death.”

Snyder said that, while the California Constitution permits the Governor to issue proclamations to convene extraordinary legislative sessions, the Legislature is prohibited from enacting bills that are not the specific subject of the proclamation. In this case, Governor Brown’s proclamation expressly states that the purpose of the extraordinary session on Medi-Cal is to “stabilize the General Fund’s costs for Medi-Cal” and to “provide rate increases for providers of Medi-Cal and developmental disability services.”

 

Comments

[Eileen Peterson]

The Slippery Slope. Once you can kill in the womb for 42 years, the result impacts the other end of the spectrum. So Sad. Pray for our America!