LIFE DIGEST: California Assembly OKs backdoor assisted suicide bill
- Jun 3, 2008 - comment
The California State Assembly has approved legislation that critics say would provide a backdoor way to legalize physician-assisted suicide.
The Assembly voted 41-32 May 28 for the bill, which is sponsored by Democrats Patty Berg and Lloyd Levine, leaders in unsuccessful efforts to pass assisted-suicide measures the last three years. The Senate has yet to vote on the legislation.
The Right to Know End-of-life Options Act, A.B. 2747, would require doctors and other health-care providers to inform patients who are believed to have less than a year to live about their options for care at the end of their lives. Among these are palliative, or total, sedation and voluntarily stopping of eating and drinking (VSED), according to the Eureka (Calif.) Times-Standard.
Palliative sedation involves medicating a person until he is unconscious. With either palliative sedation or VSED, a patient could die of dehydration and starvation.
“This deceptive bill will cause death and shorten life, despite its claims,” said Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families, in a written statement.
“Assisted suicide by total sedation ignores the sanctity of human life and violates life-affirming medical ethics. People who are ill need support, spiritual care and counseling if they’re depressed,” he said. “By transforming palliative sedation into a vehicle for assisted suicide, A.B. 2747 would transform doctors and nurses from healers and comforters into killers like Dr. Jack Kevorkian.”
Berg denied the measure is another way of legalizing assisted suicide. “This bill just says the doctor needs to tell you what all your legal options are,” she told the Times-Standard.
The support of Compassion and Choices for the bill, however, demonstrates the legislation fits with the organization’s national effort to legalize assisted suicide, according to the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF). Compassion and Choices, a leading advocate for assisted suicide, is promoting a similar bill in Vermont, DREDF reported.
Personhood amendment qualifies in Colorado
A Colorado constitutional amendment that would legally protect all human beings from the moment of conception has qualified to be on the November ballot.
A projected 103,000 signatures were deemed valid in the effort to place Amendment 48 before the voters, Secretary of State Mike Coffman said May 29 in announcing the measure’s qualification. That total was far more than the about 76,000 signatures required.
The amendment, which would become part of the state constitution under the title “Persons defined” if approved, says in its brief text “the terms ‘person’ or ‘persons’ shall include any human being from the moment of fertilization.”
The initiative’s sponsor, Kristi Burton, 20, of Colorado for Equal Rights, said in a written release, “All humans should be protected by love and by law, and this amendment is a historic effort to ensure equal rights for every person. This victory is the voice of the people and all credit goes [to] our Creator.”
It will be the first the citizens of any state have voted on such an amendment, according to Baptist Press. If approved by voters, the amendment would clash with Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that legalized abortion throughout all stages of pregnancy.
Pawlenty vetoes ‘clone-and-kill’ bill
Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty vetoed May 23 what some pro-life organizations described as a “clone-and-kill” bill.
Pawlenty, a Republican who has been mentioned as a possible running mate for presumptive presidential nominee John McCain, rejected legislation that would have permitted the University of Minnesota to use state funds for embryonic stem cell research. His veto came after the legislative session adjourned, meaning there will be no override effort.
Legislative supporters of the measure said it would prohibit human cloning, but it actually would have allowed cloning, as long as all embryos are destroyed, according to Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL).
“Minnesota citizens do not support clone-and-kill experiments that treat human life as mere raw material for experimentation,” said Andrea Rau, MCCL legislative associate, in a written statement.
The bill would have crossed “core ethical and moral boundaries,” Pawlenty said in his veto message, according to MCCL. Research on adult stem cells should be encouraged, he said, MCCL reported.
The extraction of stem cells from embryos results in the destruction of the tiny human beings, while research on stem cells from non-embryonic sources does not require harm to the donor.
Virginia to seek rehearing on abortion ban ruling
Virginia’s attorney general announced May 30 he will ask the entire U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to review the invalidation of the state’s ban on partial-birth abortions by a three-judge panel of the court.
Bob McDonnell, who plans to file June 2 for a rehearing, said he believes the 2003 law is constitutional. “Given the significance of the issues at stake, and the fact that the United States Supreme Court recently upheld a very similar federal ban on the procedure, the full court should review” the 2-1 opinion issued May 20, the GOP attorney general said in a written statement.
The divided panel said the 2003 state law prohibiting “partial birth infanticide” went beyond a federal ban enacted the same year and unconstitutionally restricted the right to abortion. The ruling came only 13 months after the Supreme Court affirmed the Partial-birth Abortion Ban Act, the federal law that prohibits an abortion technique that involves the killing of a nearly totally delivered baby usually in at least the fifth month of pregnancy.
A partial-birth abortion, as typically performed, involves the feet-first delivery of an intact baby until only the head is left in the birth canal. The doctor pierces the base of the infant’s skull with surgical scissors before inserting a catheter into the opening and suctioning out the brain, killing the baby. The technique provides for easier removal of the baby’s head.
After its 5-4 ruling in April 2007, the Supreme Court returned the case from the Fourth Circuit to the appeals court for reconsideration in light of the justices’ opinion regarding the federal ban.
The Fourth Circuit Court, which is based in Richmond, Va., includes federal courts in Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission works to protect the sanctity of human life. If you would like to learn more about this issue, additional resources are available here. If your church is interested in purchasing materials on the sanctity of human life, please visit our online bookstore and erlc.com.
Further Learning
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