Your help is needed to stop assisted suicide in California.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The California assisted suicide law is being successfully challenged through the courts and the outcome may depend on you.

Life Legal Defense Foundation is successfully arguing that the California assisted suicide law is unconstitutional, but they are being challenged by the assisted suicide lobby and California Attorney General (AG), Xavier Becerra. Life Legal Defense Foundation needs your financial support to prevent this case from turning into a David and Goliath story.

• Donate to the Life Legal Defense Foundation. (Donation Link).

On May 15, 2018 Judge Daniel Ottolia declared that the California assisted suicide law was unconstitutional when it enacted the assisted suicide law during a special session dedicated to health care funding. Life Legal Defense stated in their media release:

Judge Ottolia found that the End of Life Option Act “does not fall within the scope of access to healthcare services” and “is not a matter of healthcare funding.” Moreover, the court ruled that, “The legislation decriminalizing assisted suicide cannot be deemed a matter incidental to the purpose of the emergency session.”

The California AG appealed the decision to the 4th District Court of Appeal, who upheld the decision of Judge Ottolia and since the court of appeal refused to stay the decision assisted suicide was once again prohibited in California.

The California AG then went back to the 4th District Court of Appeal to request a stay of the decision and on June 15, the court of appeal granted a stay of the decision, once again permitting assisted suicide in California.

Alexandra Snyder

The most recent article, published in Valley News, explains that the fate of the California assisted suicide law will be decided by the appellate court later this summer. The Valley News article states:

Life Legal Defense Foundation Executive Director Alexandra Snyder said her organization remains dedicated to seeing the law permanently invalidated to protect “citizens from being ‘helped’ to commit suicide.” 

The foundation has underscored in literature what it describes as troubling aspects of the law, including that a “family member can initiate the request for assisted suicide ... not the person seeking suicide;” “an interested ‘witness’ – someone who will benefit financially from the person’s death – can sign off on the suicide drug request” and “any doctor or osteopath can write the prescription” without a history of interaction with the patient.

The reality is that Life Legal Defense has proven that the California assisted suicide law is unconstitutional but they are facing mammoth opponents who have infinite resources to promote assisted suicide in California. 

Life Legal Defense Foundation needs your financial support to ensure that the lives of Californians are protected from assisted suicide.

According to the assisted suicide lobby 504 people have died by assisted suicide in California since June 2016.

• Donate to the Life Legal Defense Foundation. (Donation Link).

Life Legal uncovers shocking facts about assisted suicide law

The following article was published by Life Legal Defense Foundation on June 22, 2018

In the course of challenging California’s End of Life Option Act, we have learned that a handful of doctors have written most of the prescriptions for lethal drugs since the law went into effect.

Life Legal attorneys have uncovered shocking facts about how California’s assisted suicide law is being implemented and who is doing the “assisting.”

One of those doctors is Lonny Shavelson, a former contract ER doctor who came out of retirement as soon as the law was passed to dispense lethal prescriptions. Shavelson is not board-certified in any medical specialty, including diagnosing or treating mental illness, which is often at the root of a request for suicide.

His sole “practice” consists of getting people to die.

Shavelson admits to having “attended at bedside” as 89 people committed suicide. He stresses that the lethal drugs must be taken within 2 minutes, or they can “fail.” By “fail,” he means the people don’t die—and may decide that they don’t want to kill themselves.

In his book “Chosen Death,” Shavelson writes about observing an assisted suicide. Gene, a lonely widower, contacted the Hemlock Society, which has since changed its name to “Compassion and Choices.” “Sarah” the head of the local Hemlock Society office, came to Gene’s home to prepare and dispense the deadly concotion. This was not Sarah’s first experience with “assisting” a person’s death. She called it “the most intimate experience you can share with a person. . . . More than sex. More than birth . . . more than anything.”

Sarah held Gene’s head on her lap as she gave him the suicide drugs. As he started to fall asleep, Sarah put a plastic bag over his head and told Gene to “Go to the light.”

But the drugs failed. Gene woke up and started screaming.

Shavelson describes what happened next:

“His good hand flew up to tear off the plastic bag. Sarah’s hand caught Gene’s wrist and held it. His body thrust upwards. She pulled his arm away and lay across Gene’s shoulders. Sarah rocked back and forth, pinning him down, her fingers twisting the bag to seal it tight at his neck as she repeated, ‘the light, Gene, go toward the light.’ Gene’s body pushed against Sarah’s. Then he stopped moving.”

As Wesley Smith writes, “There is a word that describes what happened to Gene, and that word is murder.”

There is no evidence that Shavelson ever reported the circumstances of Gene’s death to authorities.

Why would he?

Once a person requests assisted suicide, the law presumes that everyone—the doctor, the suicide facilitator, family members, hospital workers—is acting with the purest of intentions.

Here is how the law protects bad actors:

• Unlike other suicides, law enforcement will not investigate an assisted suicide to determine the cause of death or whether the person was coerced or forced—or if the person was murdered after he changed his mind, as Gene was.
• The underlying disease —not suicide—is listed as the cause of death, which means doctors and coroners have to lie on the person’s death certificate. 
• In fact, the law does not permit the use of the word suicide to describe the process of self-ingesting a lethal dose of barbiturates to end one’s life.
• If a doctor was negligent in making the initial diagnosis or prognosis, no one will know because all records will state that the person died of the alleged disease.
• An “interested” witness—someone who will benefit financially from the person’s death—can sign off on the suicide drug request.
• A family member can initiate the request for assisted suicide—Shavelson says that most of the calls to his suicide clinic come from family members, not from the person seeking suicide.
• Any doctor or osteopath can write the prescription. No prior doctor-patient relationship with the person seeking suicide drugs is required.
• No mental health evaluation is required, even though the majority of people who receive a terminal diagnosis suffer from depression.
• Someone else can pick up the lethal drugs from the pharmacy.

In short, assisted suicide laws are designed to facilitate the perfect crime.

So how does this affect me?

You might wonder how this affects you or your loved ones since you would never seek assisted suicide.

Proponents of assisted suicide want to normalize suicide as THE end-of-life option. It is not an accident that California’s law is called the End of Life Option—not options—Act.

Shavelson’s goal is for hospice to “take over” assisted suicide. Compassion and Choices—the former Hemlock Society now heavily funded by George Soros—wants to “change the health care system” so that suicide is legalized nationwide. Faye Girsh, Senior Adviser at the Final Exit Network, says it should “be a crime” to not allow someone to kill themselves. Dr. Philip Nitschke, Director and Founder of Exit International, says “people have a right to dispose of [their] life whenever they want.”

Former Compassion and Choices litigator and head of the End of Life Liberty Project Kathryn Tucker says “it would be appropriate for the practice to become more normalized within the practice of medicine, with less government oversight and regulation.”

Life Legal regularly handles cases involving the denial or withdrawal of life-sustaining medical care without the patient’s consent. People are starved and dehydrated to death against their will because it has become “normalized within the practice of medicine” to deprive people of basic care.

I shudder to imagine what full-scale normalization of assisted suicide would look like.

What we do know already is that normalizing suicide means:

• Insurance providers will happily cover the cost of a deadly dose of barbiturates to avoid having to pay for actual medical care and treatment.
• Some doctors will simply write a prescription for lethal drugs instead of encouraging patients to seek a second opinion for potentially treatable diseases.
• A new industry is being created that allows doctors who do not offer any medical care or treatment to charge patients exorbitant fees in exchange for a prescription for lethal drugs.

We are following in the path of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Canada, where the normalization of assisted suicide quickly led to voluntary—and involuntary—euthanasia.

Judge Rules California’s Assisted Suicide Law Unconstitutional

This media release was sent out by Life Legal Defense on May 15, 2018 

• Update: California assisted suicide law is unconstitutional. Decision upheld by appeals court.

NAPA, Calif., May 15, 2018 — A California judge overturned the state’s assisted suicide law this morning, ruling that the legislature acted outside the scope of its authority when it enacted the End of Life Option Act.

The Act’s sponsors introduced the bill in a special session of the legislature convened by Governor Jerry Brown to address Medicaid funding shortfalls, services for the disabled, and in-home health support services.

Life Legal attorneys appeared in court this morning to argue that the End of Life Option Act, which decriminalizes physician-assisted suicide, is not related or even incidental to the stated purpose of the special session. Suicide is not health care.

Riverside Superior Court Judge Daniel Ottolia agreed, holding that “the End of Life Option Act does not fall within the scope of access to healthcare services,” and that it “is not a matter of health care funding.”

Life Legal filed a motion for judgment on the pleadings in March 2018, arguing that the law should be overturned because the manner in which it was passed is unconstitutional. We have argued from the outset that suicide has nothing to do with the provision of health services.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra opposed our motion, stating that legislation passed during special sessions is presumed to be constitutional. The Attorney General also argued that Life Legal’s plaintiff physicians do not have standing to challenge the End of Life Option Act.

Alexandra Snyder

Judge Ottolia ruled that doctors do have standing to bring challenges on behalf of their patients, especially in this case, as terminally ill patients would face significant difficulties filing their own lawsuits against the Act.

“We are thrilled by today’s ruling, which reinstates critical legal protections for vulnerable patients,” said Life Legal Defense Foundation Executive Director Alexandra Snyder. “The court made it very clear that assisted suicide has nothing to do with increasing access to health care and that hijacking the special session to advance an unrelated agenda is impermissible.”

Stephanie Packer, who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, was present at the hearing. After the End of Life Option Act was implemented, Stephanie’s insurance company denied coverage of life-saving chemotherapy treatment, but said it would pay for “aid-in-dying” drugs, which would cost $1.20.

Stephanie has spoken out against assisted suicide in California and other states, saying, “I am so grateful that California’s assisted suicide law was overturned today. The bill’s proponents tout dignity, choice, compassion, and painlessness. I am here to tell you that nothing could be further from the truth. Choice is really an illusion for a very few. For too many, assisted suicide will be the only affordable ‘treatment’ that is offered them.”

It is anticipated that Attorney General Becerra will appeal today’s ruling.