California renews push to legalize assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg

By Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

California Governor Jerry Brown may need to veto the assisted suicide Bill AB 15.

The assisted suicide lobby has renewed their push to legalize assisted suicide in California after their previous assisted suicide bill, SB 128, was stopped in the Health Committee.

The assisted suicide lobby is taking advantage of the special legislative session called by Governor Jerry Brown to address shortfalls in healthcare funding. The new assisted suicide bill AB 15 is nearly identical to SB 128, but AB 15 will not be heard by the Health Committee.

Tim Rosales, a spokesperson for the Californians Against Assisted Suicide told the media:

"It is particularly troubling that in this rush to judgment, proponents are linking this bill with health care financing," 

"That should be truly frightening to those on MediCal and subsidized health care, who quite logically fear a system where prescribing suicide pills could be elevated to a treatment option."

Dr Jacqueline Harvey has written about how the assisted suicide lobby uses subversive strategies to sell assisted suicide. 

Wesley Smith

Bioethicist Wesley Smith stated on his blog:

Having lost fair and square in a California Assembly Committee, the suicide pushers have filed a new legalization bill–AB 15–for a special session intended to grapple with health care costs.

Assisted suicide advocacy is about lying. Catch this bit of mendacity from the bill: Aid-in-dying drug” means a drug determined and prescribed by a physician for a qualified individual, which the qualified individual may choose to self-administer to bring about his or her death due to a terminal disease. 

No. The death would not be from any disease, but a lethal dose of drugs.

The committee has been re-jiggered to take the “no” votes away, I am told. Can we say, stacked deck?

And the bill is on a very fast track. Can’t give people time to think or understand why assisted suicide is bad medicine and even worse public policy.

If this shameful machination works, I hope Jerry Brown remembers his service to the dying with Mother Theresa. She is definitely spinning in her grave.

California Governor Jerry Brown may need to veto Bill AB 15.

The assisted suicide lobby is becoming desperate after losing two court cases in California, after assisted suicide bills have been defeated in several states and after the New Mexico Court of Appeals overturned an activist lower court decision to once again affirm protections in law from assisted suicide in that state.