Another California Judge rejects assisted suicide.

By Alex Schadenberg

Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The suicide lobby, in the past few weeks, has lost 3 court cases that challenged laws that protect people from assisted suicide in the US.

Yesterday, San Francisco Judge Ernest Goldsmith upheld the law that protects Californians from assisted suicide. Goldsmith said: 

he felt that by granting the petition he would be creating a judge-made law without input from constituents. He agreed the legislature would be better equipped to take on the issue. 

The judge repeatedly expressed concern Friday about the possibility that, if the law was changed, a patient who is suffering financially from a terminal illness would be able to choose to die simply because their family wasn’t able to afford their continued medical expenses.

The San Francisco case concerned a woman with cancer and a doctor who is willing to assist her suicide. The plaintiffs lawyer, Kathryn Tucker, is the former legal director for a leading suicide lobby group. 

Last week Wesley Smith reported that Tucker is trying to impose unfettered assisted suicide on Americans by way of the courts. Smith reported:

...Tucker ... called SB 128 an “outdated approach, seeking to replicate a measure adopted 21 years ago in Oregon.” In her view, litigation would be more effective than legislation. For example, if the plaintiffs prevail in Brody, Tucker says, “the same open practice of aid in dying will emerge in California … [without] burdensome requirements for collecting and reporting data.”

SB 128 is the assisted suicide bill that the suicide lobby is currently pushing California legislators to approve.

On July 24, San Diego Judge, Gregory Pollack, found that the California assisted suicide law is constitutional.

On August 11, the New Mexico court of appeals overturned a lower court activist decision claiming that their is a "right" to assisted suicide in the New Mexico constitution.

The three-judge panel ruled 2-1 that the district court had erred when it determined that “aid in dying is a fundamental liberty interest.”

In-spite of using subversive strategies to sell assisted suicide, the suicide lobby, in the US, continues to fail.