California Seniors group is collecting signatures to overturn assisted suicide bill.

By Alex Schadenberg
International Chair - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Seniors Against Suicide, a group that opposed the California assisted suicide bill that was signed into law by Governor Brown on October 5, filed papers on October 7 to place the issue of assisted suicide on the State ballot in 2016. 

On October 20, Secretary of State, Alex Padilla announced that opponents of assisted suicide have received permission to collect signatures to qualify a referendum to overturn the assisted suicide law. According to my news LA:

Stephanie Packer, who described herself as a “wife, mother and patient suffering from scleroderma,” wrote in a letter to the Attorney General’s Office submitting her name as a proponent of the referendum effort, that “when confronting the reality of a terminal diagnosis, it is understandable why many look to suicide. 

“It is wrong for our collective response to the depression and emotional pain that follows a terminal diagnosis to offer suicide as the treatment,” Packer wrote Monday. 

“Those confronting their most difficult days should be treated with compassion, understanding and support. Our medical response should not be to encourage them to end their lives prematurely.”

The California coalition of groups opposing assisted suicide are required to submit 365,800 by January 4, 2016 to qualify the measure for the November 2016 ballot.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition urges every group that opposes assisted suicide to join the signature collecting campaign. Assisted suicide causes the death of people at the most vulnerable time of their life. Support caring not killing.