Free Republic

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed into law a bill that opponents say could open the door to the eventuality of physician-assisted suicide in the nation’s most populous state. AB 2747 mandates that physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants provide patients diagnosed with a terminal illness – or who have been given a diagnosis of one year or less to live – with “comprehensive information and counseling regarding legal end-of-life options, as specified.” Specifically the law obligates doctors to inform the patient about the option of “withholding or withdrawal of life-sustaining treatments” – including food and water. Health care providers...

Schwarzenegger signs euthanasia measure into law California moved a step closer to legalized mercy killing on Sept. 30, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law the “California Right to Know End-of-Life Act of 2008.” The governor’s signature came in a flurry of bill signing on Tuesday evening, just hours before the statutory deadline for him to either sign or veto legislation. The governor’s press office announced he had signed the euthanasia bill at 7 p.m. The bill, AB 2747, by longtime assisted suicide advocate Assemblywoman Patty Berg, D-Eureka, could force Catholic physicians and other doctors in California who oppose mercy...

Catholic physicians and other doctors in California who oppose mercy killing would be forced to provide terminally ill patients with information on morally questionable “end-of-life care options” under a bill now pending in the state legislature. The bill, AB 2747, is a repeatedly amended and watered down version of an original euthanasia measure sponsored by Assemblywoman Patty Berg, D-Eureka. Berg’s original bill, termed a “stealth assisted-suicide bill” by opponents, would have allowed doctors to administer “palliative sedation” to deliberately induce a coma, and to starve patients to death under a provision called “voluntary stopping of eating and drinking.” Also excised...

Just as Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama was in Denver preaching to a crowd of thousands of fans about the "change" he wants to see in the United States, his party compatriots in the California Legislature were making a "change," by approving a controversial plan that would allow nurses to assist terminally ill patients with suicide. "AB 2747 allows a physician assistant or a nurse to opine that a patient is 'terminal,' and then push for unnatural death by 'palliative sedation,'" said Randy Thomasson, chief of the Campaign for Children and Families shortly after the vote. "Depressed patients who...