California Legalizes Assisted Suicide
October 7, 2015
DYING PEOPLE are exploited by the assisted-suicide movement, which presents their tearful testimonies to make it seem as if it’s all about preventing suffering and pain. It’s not. Matthew Archibald writes about the approval earlier this week of an assisted suicide bill in California:
California became a crueler place today. Proponents of the law argue that people in terrible pain can opt out. But palliative care has never been better. That’s not what this is about.
This is about California running a cost/benefit analysis on life. If you’re old or disabled and not contributing maybe an early departure is best for everyone else.
Chuck Donovan, president of Charlotte Lozier Institute, called the law’s passage “tragic.”
“Legalization of doctor assisted suicide is like a forest fire. The practice has become so permissive in the Netherlands, for example, that doctors are now routinely euthanizing adults, infants, and children – sometimes without consent,” he said. “That the most populous state in the union has now enshrined this practice in law is a warning sign for the rest of the nation.”
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WF writes:
The state legalizes Euthanasia but this has been common practice in most hospitals for the last 15 years since Palliative Care has become a specialty recognized by the medical society. Hospitals now employ physicians with the specific goal of recognizing and “treating” patients who are suffering from fatal diseases. On the face of it this would appear to be reasonable but many “fatal” diseases may take months to years to reach their end. Patients and families are badgered by the Palliative Care service to consent to coming under their “care.”
If the families and patients don’t initially consent to this care, the palliative care team will visit them daily in the hospital urging them to realize the terminal nature of their situation. In some circumstances this may be the best solution but the picture is complicated by the government’s generous payment to the palliative care service that makes this service one of the most profitable areas in the hospital, on par with cardiac surgery in remuneration.
Finally when the patient or family agree to going under their care the patients are routinely given lethal doses of narcotic analgesics, whether the patient requests them or not.
Many penurious family members would like to see an end to the financial drain on the family’s expected inheritance and see in palliative care a means of saving this money.
