Sponsors of California Bill Promoting Euthanasia Remove Objectionable Parts
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
June 26, 2008
Sacramento, CA (LifeNews.com) — The California legislators sponsoring a bill that would have promoted euthanasia have removed the objectionable parts that prompted opposition from pro-life groups. Assemblywoman Patty Berg apparently decided the rest of her bill, dealing with hospice care, was too important to be defeated.
After Berg introduced AB 2747, pro-life groups joined allies in the medical and disability rights communities in opposing the bill.
The measure would codify palliative sedation and voluntary stopping of eating and drinking as legitimate means of pain control and allow doctors and nurses to suggest death by unconscious dehydration.
But Bill May of Catholics for a Common Good tells LifeNews.com that those problematic provisions no longer appear in the bill.
"They removed starvation and dehydration as a medical option. They removed mention of rarely used palliative sedation that renders a patient unconscious," he explained.
May credited the success of stopping assisted suicide and euthanasia in the California legislature for the fourth time in a row to the number of calls and emails from concerned citizens.
"This could not have happened without your phone calls that brought attention to the sinister language in the bill to state senators," he said. "It could not have happened without the people who demonstrated in front of the State Capitol building today and
expressed their opposition at the hearing."
May said the California Catholic Conference, Catholic Healthcare West, and the coalition of pro-life and disability rights groups under the umbrella of Californians Against Assisted Suicide, worked overtime to stop the pro-euthanasia bill.
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