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Sen. Susan Eggman (Photo: Kevin Sanders for California Globe)
Proposed Amendments to California Assisted Suicide Law Makes Accessing it Easier
‘The focus instead should be on doing everything to improve care at the end of life’
By Katy Grimes, April 12, 2021 4:32 pm
“When it comes to carrying out the death penalty for convicted murders, the California Legislature finds the lethal drug cocktails ‘cruel and unusual punishment,’ which they say is a violation of the Eighth Amendment. Yet lawmakers were more than willing to approve a lethal drug cocktail to allow sick people to kill themselves,” I wrote in 2015 as the California Legislature was considering passing an assisted suicide law.
After months of contentious and difficult wrangling, the California Legislature finally passed the controversial physician assisted suicide bill in 2015, and it was signed into law by Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown. But many argued that passage of legalized physician-assisted suicide would provide perverse incentives for insurance carriers to choose the cheapest, quick fix option – particularly in publicly-funded healthcare.
I wrote that in 2015 when AB2X-15, the controversial assisted suicide bill by then-Assemblywoman Susan Eggman (D-Stockton), was going through the legislative committee process.
Today, Senator Susan Eggman has added an amendment to her original physician-assisted dying law, ABX2-15 the End of Life Option Act, eliminating the January 1, 2026 sunset date, and allows social workers to conduct mental health exams that make accessing assisted suicide more easy.
“On February 11, 2021, an amendment to California’s law, End of Life, SB380, was introduced by Senator Susan Eggman (D),” DeathWithDignity.org reported. “The amendment, if passed, will allow a waiver of the 15-day wait period if the attending physician determines a patient will die before the end of the wait period. The bill adds or clarifies additional language, including eliminating the January 1, 2026 sunset date.”
Proponents of assisted suicide claimed the new law would allow mentally competent, terminally ill patients receive a prescription from their doctor for drugs to end their life. Modeled after the Oregon law, the California Legislature failed to pass the bill in Assembly Committees during the regular legislative session, and it died. But proponents of assisted suicide legislation did a legislative end run around the appropriate process and resurrected the bill in a special session convened to address transportation and Medi-Cal budget issues.
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At the time of the 2015 hearing, then-Senator Jeff Stone, (R-Riverside), a licensed, practicing pharmacist, addressed the issue in debate the way only a medical specialist can. “I formulate cocktails that have narcotics, that have anti-spasmodics, that in some cases, are made 500 times stronger than you can commercially buy in the United States, to give to people the palliative care, that in many cases – in most cases – will treat the pain,” Stone said. “Sufentanil, another narcotic, is 1,000 times stronger than morphine. “
Stone reminded colleagues that suicide is not a crime. “Anyone in America can take their own life without government say-so,” he added.
One of the proponents’ claims was that assisted suicide will end end-of-life pain and suffering. “There are no medical protocols on dosage, nor can pharmacists guarantee these will not cause suffering” Stone said. In Oregon, 15 to 25 percent of people who take the lethal drug cocktails fail to die, he explained.
Sen. Stone said anyone can search the Internet and easily find deadly drug and alcohol combinations, including taking a 100-count bottle of Benadryl, with a six-pack of beer. “Before you get to that last beer, you’ll probably be gone,” Stone said. “So why do we need this law?”
“We took the Hypocratic Oath,” Stone said. “We do not administer poisons.”
One of the myths about assisted suicide in Oregon is that it is highly regulated and has strong safeguards, Marilyn Golden, senior policy analyst with the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund explained in an interview. Golden said proponents gloss over the serious lack of safeguards in Oregon’s law. Minimal data collection and gross lack of strong oversight of assisted suicide undermines any pretense of rigorous monitoring or strict regulation, Golden says.
Several lawmakers in opposition warned that by adding assisted suicide to the existing treatment options available, it becomes the cheapest option and makes it easier for steadfast and unambiguous pressure to be exacted on the most vulnerable – especially the poor.
At one of the legislative hearings on the bill in 2015, Golden warned the “Death with Dignity Act” alleged to focus on patient autonomy and “choice,” but the focus instead should be on doing everything to improve care at the end of life. Golden said: “Don’t be seduced by rhetoric of choice for a few, into a dangerous policy change that will bring social injustice to many.”
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So-called “Assisted Suicide” is the most evil and horrifyingly intrusive legislation of all to come out of Sacramento, and that is saying something. Now legislators such as Sen Susan Eggman, who seems to be obsessed with death, wants easier access to it for all of us? Gee thanks, Senator!
Apparently such assisted-suicide cheerleaders can’t even be bothered to put up a pretense anymore of helping people or doing the right thing; that is if they even know what the right thing is, which is doubtful. Of COURSE this will be used to save money and time and trouble. And of course it will affect the poor most of all. And bonus points for further corrupting the practice of medicine in this state.
Wholeheartedly agree with policy analyst Marilyn Golden that “the focus instead should be on doing everything to improve care at the end of life.” Period.
I thought being diagnosed with a terminal illness wouldn’t be as bad since this had passed but learned in hospital it’s not that simple. There were two interviews with mental health care professionals via video conference (and this was pre-pandemic) that lasted about 90 seconds and they didn’t see grim picture that I did. I was told I could have two good years left maybe more if I changed my lifestyle and took medication as prescribed.
The medication has gone up about five thousand dollars in less than two years and currently is over $53,000 a year, an amount I could not afford in the best of times which are long gone. I have also learned that since they started me on meds and put me on medi-cal/medicaid (whichever) I am will never be able to own real estate unless I can earn enough to not only get off of assistance but pay back state for past treatment. There comes a time when death is not the worst thing that can happen.
I’m all for assisted suicide, but the way the government handles the matter, it’s worse than death itself. If anyone can take his or her life without committing a crime, where is all this legality knotting coming from and why is it really necessary? What’s the real purpose? Only more government control. Doctors should be healers and the government should stay out of people’s lives, but we live under tyranny and the government has never wanted anyone to be free!
(D) in Democrat now stands for Death, Destruction, Demise, Deceit, Despair.
I agree with @ShowandTell, the tragedy is the corruption of modern medicine. Do no harm, is meaningless.
As the old slogan goes: The road to hell is paved with good intentions!
It’s not surprising that a Democrat like Senator Susan Eggman would make assisted suicide easier when they’ve made it so easy to abort babies? Democrats are like a death cult?
Pro-abortion while being anti death penalty, no logic. And there lies so much of the problem with the (D) party, no logic.
Living in California and being subject to the laws these imbeciles propose and eventually pass, makes one seriously SEARCH for a means of assisted suicide…
If someone wants to be at peace, and there way of peace is to going to a better place, then so be it.