After receiving substantial backlash, Senator Catherine Blakespear (D-Laguna Hills) withdrew her controversial bill that would have drastically expanded California’s assisted suicide program.
“I have decided not to move forward this year with SB 1196, my legislation to modify California’s End of Life Option Act to expand options for adults with an incurable and fatal disease,” Blakespear wrote on X. “If people have an incurable illness or disease that is causing them great suffering and will in fact result in their natural death, I believe they should have the autonomy to make decisions that allow them to have the exit of their choosing, at a time, and in a manner‚ that works best for them. However, at this point, there is a reluctance from many around me to take up this discussion, and the future is unclear.”
Background:
In 2016, California adopted the California End of Life Option Act (EOLOA), which allowed patients with a terminal illness to undergo assisted suicide with certain safeguards in place to prevent malpractice, such as shielding poor, mentally ill, and disabled patients who were terminally ill from being pressured or manipulated into killing themselves. In 2021, the slippery slope began by removing some of the protections for doctors with moral reservations about assisting patients with suicide, as well as changing other safeguards. Christian doctors fought back and sued after the changes went into effect, achieving a $300,000 settlement.
Assisted suicide proponents who originally marketed the “safeguards” now rebrand them as “barriers” to access. The initial limitations to assisted suicide introduced in 2016 only served as a strategic starting point, designed to make the concept of assisted suicide appear less extreme, encouraging societal acceptance of euthanasia as a viable solution to suffering. Senator Blakespear followed the same pattern this year, but her supporters thought she was going too fast.
SB 1196 attempted to widen the number of people who could get suicide drugs by removing the limitation that you had to have a “terminal disease” with six months to live. Instead, a patient had to have “a grievous and irremediable medical condition,” characterized by a severe and incurable illness or disease that leads to an irreversible decline in capabilities, causes intolerable physical or psychological suffering that cannot be alleviated in an acceptable way to the individual, and is likely to be the natural cause of death when considering the person’s medical situation. This could encompass a wide array of health issues, ranging from diabetes and the initial stages of cancer to the frailty associated with aging, multiple sclerosis, or paraplegia. It even explicitly extended the suicide drugs to those with dementia.
According to a “fact sheet” released by Senator Blakespear regarding the proposed bill, “two provisions [the six-months-left-to-live and capacity requirements] are needlessly excluding many Californians from accessing aid-in-dying medicine.”
Opposition:
Senator Blakespear had almost no choice but to withdraw her bill after the author of California’s first assisted suicide bill in 2016, Senator Susan Eggman, came out against it.
“While I have compassion for those desiring further change, pushing for too much too soon puts CA & the country at risk of losing the gains we have made for personal autonomy,” Eggman wrote on X.
Eggman admits what we’ve known all along: Democrat legislators are trying to warm the country up to euthanasia, slowly but surely.
“In Canada, assisted suicide for the terminally ill was just expanded to allow an autistic but healthy 27-year-old woman to die,” Republican Party of Los Angeles County spokesperson Roxanne Hoge said. “Misguided Sacramento Democrats will not stop until assisted suicide is a universal right.”
We’re glad to see this dangerous bill off the table this session, but we know it is not the end of the push for assisted suicide in California. We will continue to fight to prevent the expansion of this egregious violation of human dignity that negates God’s divine plan for life.
