California’s End of Life Option Act

By Michael W. Salemink - Lutherans for Life:

We grieve with the citizens of the State of California. On October 5, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law ABX2-15, the End of Life Option Act. This legislation authorizes an adult “determined by his or her attending physician to be suffering from a terminal disease” to have poison prescribed “for the purpose of ending his or her life.” Along with Oregon, Washington, Vermont, and Montana, California is now the fifth state that allows physician-assisted suicide.

We fear the chilling effect this will have on the culture surrounding those who are ailing or aging among us and on the care provided to them. The Netherlands and Belgium, which have permitted assisted suicide for decades, are witnessing continuing expansion of the practice and increased deaths from it. Recent research there demonstrates that this act that was initially limited to situations of terminal illness has been gradually widened so that it now includes any “unbearable suffering.” Individuals with a disability or depression—afflictions for which effective treatments are available and from which sustained relief is common—are ending their lives under a physician’s supervision. In some cases, the victims are even children and patients who never consented. And a study conducted in Oregon found that authorizing assisted suicide increased the incidence of overall “non-assisted” suicides.

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