The Right to Die

Californians fighting for the right to end their lives will have to wait after a court decision this week on one of two lawsuits challenging the state’s ban on assisted suicide.

“You’re asking this court to make new law,” San Diego Superior Court Judge Gregory Pollack said when he dismissed a lawsuit filed by Christy O’Donnell, a Los Angeles civil rights lawyer who has advanced cancer.

“If new law is made it should be by the Legislature or by a ballot measure,” the judge said.

The second lawsuit, still pending, was filed by four San Francisco doctors and several cancer patients. The plaintiffs asked the court to declare that patients facing the end of life have a “civil right” under the California Constitution “to make their own decisions about their bodies.”

The lawsuits were filed after the Legislature began work on Senate Bill 128 — End of Life Option Act — but the proposal has been shelved.

O’Donnell sued the state to allow her doctor to prescribe life-ending medication for her without fear of prosecution.

O’Donnell’s case, which was joined by two other patients and a San Diego doctor, was supported by Compassion and Choices, an advocacy group formerly known as the Hemlock Society. The group abandoned its founding slogan, “Good life, good death,” for the politically correct, “Promoting end-of-life choice.”

Far from grassroots, Compassion and Choices, which is funded by the progressive left, works to convince the sick, disabled and depressed that taking one’s own life is honorable.

California’s proposal is modeled on Oregon’s assisted-suicide law, which ultimately was approved by voters in 1997.

Proponents of assisted suicide gloss over the actual data that show the number of doctor-assisted deaths in the Netherlands and Belgium are on the rise. In the Netherlands, where euthanasia has been legal since 2002, the number of deaths doubled in just six years.

One of the myths about assisted suicide in Oregon is that it is highly regulated.

“Proponents gloss over the serious lack of safeguards in Oregon’s law,” said Marilyn Golden, senior policy analyst with the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund.

Earlier in the year, Golden warned if the California legislation passed, “some people’s lives will be ended without their consent, through mistakes and abuse.”

Tim Rosales, a spokesman for California Against Assisted Suicide, said, “The message seems to be obvious to everyone but those promoting suicide — there is no right way to do a wrong thing.”

California voters rejected euthanasia in 1992, defeating Proposition 161 by nearly 900,000 votes. Colorado, Connecticut, Maine, Delaware, Massachusetts, and Maryland have rejected similar bills.