Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide Information

GOVERNOR SIGNS AB 2747 INTO LAW

By Brian Johnston

AB 2747, a bill sponsored by euthanasia advocates, requires vulnerable cancer patients to be told of their 'legal rights' at the time of their diagnosis. The bill's true effect is what isn't explicitly said in the legislation, but what now must be said to the patient.  One of the only "legal rights" such patients have in California is to commit suicide by dehydration.

Patients do not have a right to any treatment that may help them, the law does not guarantee such things. They do not have the right to go to a better hospital. In fact one of their very few actual legal "rights" is one granted through an obscure California court decision - the Bouvia Decision - which required unwilling physicians to abet the suicide of a non-terminal patient.

Though passed by the narrowest of margins, thanks to the Governor's signature, every patient, at the time of their diagnosis, must now be informed of that "legal right." Physicians unwilling to coach their vulnerable patients in "the Miranda Rights of suicide" MUST still ensure that their patient will be 'spoken to' by someone who will tend to such dangerously manipulative, 'legal affairs.'  

I've been in countless California nursing homes as both a California Commissioner on Aging and on the State's Board of Examiners of Nursing Homes... This bill will encourage tens of thousands of unheralded, quiet deaths by dehydration.

 AB 2747 pretends to offer comfort and clarity for the vulnerable, but it does exactly the opposite. By requiring the "legal options" be read to vulnerable patients it will encourage patients to follow that option. Both these patients and those who should otherwise be advocates for their lives, will instead consider using dehydration to end their lives. It's easy. It's legal. The doctor says so.

Americans have not learned the lessons of the Netherlands, where dehydration of the non-terminal in the '70s opened the door to the supposedly "quicker" and "more humane" methods of today. 

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Brian Johnston is director of the CPLC.  Formerly Commissioner on Aging for the State of California, he has served on the state’s Board of Examiners of Nursing Homes, and the Board of Directors of the National Legal Center for the Medically Dependent and Disabled. He is author of the book Death As A Salesman: What’s Wrong With Assisted Suicide.

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More Euthanasia Information

HELPFUL DEFINITIONS

BASIC FACTS ON ASSISTED SUICIDE

CHECK OUT NRLC'S WILL TO LIVE, A PRO-LIFE ALTERNATIVE TO LIVING WILLS

READ ABOUT OREGON'S EUTHANASIA LAW

HELP STOP ASSISTED SUICIDE IN CALIFORNIA

Visit these websites for more Euthanasia Information:
Euthanasia.Com:  www.euthanasia.com
National Right to Life: www.nrlc.org/euthanasia
International Anti-Euthanasia Coalition: www.epcc.ca