California legislators now pursue physician-assisted suicide

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Welcome to the “Brave New World.” On the heels of voter-approved Proposition 71, the ballot initiative obligating California taxpayers to provide up to $6 billion to fund embryonic stem cell research, state lawmakers Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, and Patty Berg, D-Santa Rosa, are now drafting a bill to legalize physician-assisted suicide for the terminally ill.

It will not be the first time such legislation is proposed for the golden state. In January 2000 AB 1592, the so-called “Death with Dignity Act,” failed to garner enough support to call for a vote. In 1992 California voters rejected Proposition 161, another “right-to-die plan,” by a 54 percent to 46 percent margin. In 1988 the first attempt to qualify a euthanasia legalization initiative for the California ballot failed to get enough signatures.

The recently proposed assisted-suicide bill will closely mirror Oregon’s “Death with Dignity Act,” said Will Shuck, press liaison for Assemblywoman Berg, who chairs the Assembly Committee on Aging. He estimated the bill would be introduced sometime next month following public hearings scheduled in Los Angeles on Jan. 21 and San Francisco on Feb. 4.

Karen Holgate, director of legislative affairs for the California Family Council, said that she is skeptical of public hearings.

“It’s a ‘PR’ ploy for them,” she said, referring to proponents of the bill. “If they don’t like what you say they ignore it or craft an argument against it.”

Holgate said lawmakers expect the proposed bill to sail through the state legislature.

“They have said if it fails, they will bring it back,” she said emphasizing that the Christian community needs to get the word out about the bill. “Who but God knows the lifespan of an individual?”

In his recent article, “Killing With Kindness,” published in Christianity Today magazine, David Gushee, Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy and senior fellow of the Carl F.H. Henry Center for Christian Leadership, tackled a common question in the debate. “Why is the church against euthanasia in instances where people are in terrible pain?”

His summary comment offers a biblical response.

“We are called to heal the sick where we can, comfort the dying always, and entrust the dead to God,” Gushee wrote. “But we are never called, and we are never free, to hasten the dying across the threshold into eternity.”

Difficult choices
No one denies that families dealing with terminal illness of a loved are often faced with difficult choices and tough questions. For them, there are no easy answers.

“At the heart of the debate is the fundamental value that we give to human life in our society,” said former San Diego City Attorney Casey Gwinn, just days before leaving office because of term limits. “If someone believes life is sacred and a gift from God, physician-assisted suicide is abhorrent,” he said. “If someone believes life is the product of random chance and has no eternal significance, physician-assisted suicide is easy to support.”

Gwinn linked the timing of the proposed legislation to voter approval of Proposition 71.

“We defined (embryonic) stem-cell research as promising medical research instead of unrestricted experimentation with the very nucleus of human life,” he said. “Now, physician-assisted suicide is defining and measuring the value of life in qualitative terms.”

Slippery slope
What proponents of assisted suicide call a compassionate option, opponents view as the slippery slope to a nightmare scenario where people are pressured to end their lives for economic reasons or to relieve the “burden” that caring for them places on friends and family members.

In the Netherlands, for instance, news reports surfaced in early December that hospitals there were already euthanizing terminally ill newborns and that the hospital was developing guidelines for the practice, which included administering lethal doses of sedatives.

“It will continue the cultural slide toward defining the value of life by the quality of life being experienced at a particular moment in time,” Gwinn said. “It happened in the abortion debate and it is happening again. Whenever ‘choice’ is elevated over ‘life,’ our very existence as human beings is devalued.”

Sanctity of life
The San Diego attorney characterized the fight over physician-assisted suicide as a key event in the ongoing battle for the sanctity of human life. Yet few people seem to realize the enormity of what is at stake.

“Most people are relatively indifferent when it comes to this issue,” said Wesley J. Smith, special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture and author of “Forced Exit: The Slippery Slope from Assisted Suicide to Legalized Murder” and “ Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World.”

“Once you decide killing is an acceptable answer to human suffering, control is gone,” he said. “The economic force of gravity alone should give us tremendous pause. What could be more cost effective than euthanasia?”

Smith characterized the proponents of assisted suicide as a small cadre of people driven by an ideology of radical individualism. He said nothing has changed since voters rejected Proposition 161 in 1992.

“People are not marching in the streets demanding to be killed in California,” Smith said.

He explained that public policy battles are won when one side wears the other side down. People must use their own time and energy to engage the issue, he insisted.

“It is going to take a hard fight to stop it,” he said of the proposed legislation.

Passion for the cause
Smith, who has written and lectured extensively on euthanasia, said people must learn about the issue and let their legislators know they don’t want legalized suicide. The more people know about physician-assisted suicide, the less they like it, he remarked.

“The problem for both sides,” Smith said, “is they (people) don’t want to talk about it.”

PAS resources:
• The Center for Bioethics and Culture: thecbc.org
• Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity: cbhd.org
• California Disability Alliance: disweb.org/cda
• California Family Council: californiafamily.org
• Compassionate Healthcare Network: chninternational.com
• Wesley Smith’s articles: wesleyjsmith.com

Published by Keener Communications Group, January 2005

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