California governor Jerry Brown signed into law yesterday a bill (SB 282) that allows any person to “aid, advise, and encourage” suicide under the state’s assisted suicide law. Until now, these actions were felonies, as the state had a longstanding policy to protect people from self-harm.
The bill was introduced in the wake of Life Legal’s challenge to California’s End of Life Option Act. We have said from the outset that physician-assisted suicide is only the beginning. California is following other forced death jurisdictions like Canada, Belgium, and the Netherlands, which garnered support for assisted suicide before legalizing voluntary and involuntary euthanasia.
We refuse to stand idly by as California and the rest of the nation proceed down this deadly path.
For over two years, Life Legal has been battling California’s assisted suicide law in the courts. Our opponents are California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who is in Planned Parenthood’s pocket and who charged David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt with 15 felony counts each for exposing the abortion giant’s role in the criminal sale of baby parts for profit; and the grossly misnamed “Compassion and Choices,” which is the Planned Parenthood of the forced death movement, heavily funded by the likes of George Soros.
We registered our opposition to SB 282 early on, as it grants complete legal immunity to anyone who wants to facilitate the death of someone who is defined as “terminally ill” under California’s assisted suicide law. The law defines “terminal” as a condition expected to lead to death within six months if left untreated.
This means diabetes, high blood pressure, treatable conditions-even an infection-could be considered “terminal.”
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California’s assisted suicide law allows “interested” witnesses, which include beneficiaries, to sign a person’s request for assisted suicide drugs. The new law allows an individual to aid, advise, and encourage a person to commit suicide-AND sign off on the method of suicide-while financially benefitting from the person’s death.
SB 282 will give unscrupulous family members and others unqualified immunity to actively participate in the killing of another human being.
We cannot imagine an issue more worthy of attention than the protection of vulnerable life. It is unfathomable to us how so many have remained silent in the face of this radical and dangerous policy shift.
Imagine if the state had passed a law saying it was okay to “aid, advise, and encourage” human trafficking. We would be outraged-and rightly so.
But when the state allows any person to actively facilitate the death by suicide of another human being, we say nothing. After all, it’s their “choice.”
This cannot stand.
We don’t say it’s okay to allow women to pay doctors to rip their unborn children limb from limb because it’s their “choice.” We don’t say it’s okay to allow children to sell themselves into sex slavery because it’s their “choice.” And we should not say it’s okay to allow people to help the vulnerable, the disabled, and the mentally ill kill themselves.
There are some choices that the state simply should not allow.
