California Bill Promoting Suicide Almost to Governor, Pro-Life Group Worries
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
August 27, 2008
Sacramento, CA (LifeNews.com) — A California pro-life group that is leading the charge against a bill to encourage doctors to promote suicide is worried that the State Assembly is about to send the measure to the governor. Though the bill doesn’t legalize assisted suicide it does enough to worry the California Pro-Life Council.
The measure originally has the purpose of legalizing assisted suicide but was amended in committee to simply urge doctors to inform patients how they can legally end their lives.
The bill has been through both chambers of the legislature and all that stands between it heading to Governor Arnold Schwarzeneggar is a final Assembly vote.
"AB 2747 by Patti Berg is now on the Assembly floor and can be voted on at anytime," CPLC told LifeNews.com in an action alert Wednesday. "With 41 votes it will go to the Governor."
The group explains the problems with the bill, saying it would "require that emotionally vulnerable patients be told that they have the ‘right to be dead.’"
"It mandates that caregivers instruct these medically dependent individuals that they can choose to deny themselves food and water, that the physician must abet this, and keep them sedated as they die," CPLC says further.
Not only does the bill promote suicide, it forces physicians who don’t want to be involved in the grisly practice to refer cases to doctors who don’t mind pushing death on their patients.
"If the attending physician does not believe it is in the best interest of the patient to be guided into this ‘knowledge,’ they are required to excuse themselves and turn the patient over to a physician who does agree that this is something a patient with a terminal diagnosis be told," the pro-life group added.
The group is urging California-based pro-life advocates to contact all members of the Assembly and urge a no vote on AB 2747.
Go to https://www.assembly.ca.gov/defaulttext.asp to find contact information for your member of the California Assembly.
Related web sites:
California House – https://www.assembly.ca.gov/defaulttext.asp
California Pro-Life Council – https://www.californiaprolife.org
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