The California State Assembly passed the assisted suicide bill Wednesday. Itwill be heard next in the State Senate,whichhas also previously passed a prior assisted suicide bill.

The bill passed 42-33 during hours of often emotional versus rational debate… anddespite being revised during an extraordinary legislative session having nothing to do with the bill. The special session was called to address funding health care and Medi-Cal.

However, the bill passed with the help of three Republicans.

Assembly members Catharine Baker, Brian Maienschein, and… Read More

It’s a dark day in California politics when a bill supporting life is killed before even being assigned to a legislative committee, and a bill pushing assisted suicide gets Republican votes.

Two California Repoublicans helped pass the revived assisted suicide bill, thereby helping Democrats fast track it.

It’s as if some have been reading from Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals: “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.”

What’s up is down right now in the California Legislature.

“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Alinsky

Following the release of several horrific videos exposing top Planned Parenthood directors negotiating to sell aborted fetus organs and tissue to the highest bidders, Assemblyman Jim… Read More

Rather than waiting for proposed assisted suicide legislation to work through the legislative committee process earlier this year, a lawsuit asked the California Superior Court to find that patients facing the end of life have a “civil right” under the California State Constitution “to make their own decisions about their bodies.”

But a Superior Court judge dismissed the lawsuit saying that physician-assisted suicide should be addressed in the Legislature.

Yet that’s exactly what the lawsuit was trying to avoid. When the latest assisted suicide bill, the “End of Life Option Act” was shelved in July because Democrats could not get enough Democrat votes, many insiders thought that the bill, and issue, was dead on arrival – particularly after the… Read More

Actor Robin Williams’ suicide is considered tragic and horrific. But many of the same people who expressed horror over Williams’ suicide say legally assisted suicide is acceptable, beneficial, and even “honorable.”

Rather than waiting for recently proposed assisted suicide legislation to work through the legislative committee process, a new lawsuit filed Wednesday asks the California Superior Court to find that physicians who provide a assisted suicide prescriptions should not be subject to criminal prosecution for assisting another to “commit suicide.”

The lawsuit wants the court to declare that patients facing the end of life have a “civil right” under the California State Constitution “to make their own decisions about their bodies.”

“If the lawsuit succeeds, terminally ill Californians, like Brittany Maynard, would not have to leave the state to receive legal aid in dying,” the press statement said. Filed by Californians with cancer, physicians, and a national nonprofit disability rights advocacy group, Disability Rights Legal Center, the lawsuit is attempting to “clarify the ability of mentally competent, terminally… Read More

Opponents of assisted dying warn that significant numbers of seriously ill people, as well as the disabled, the mentally ill, and even those who are depressed, could end up being swept up in the new law, prioritizing cost effectiveness, over higher costs of ongoing care.

“Assisted suicide proponents frequently appeal to free choice and self-determination. But in reality, legalized assisted suicide actually diminishes individual choice, control, and self-determination,” warns the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund.

This week, Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, and Sen. Bill Monning, D-Carmel, introduced the End of Life Option Act, a bill to authorize medical aid-in-dying in California.

Senate Bill 128, is modeled on… Read More