1/21/15: Don't give doctors a license to kill in California
TAKE ACTION -- Please call your California state legislators and Gov. Jerry Brown
"Don't give doctors a license to kill -- no physician-assisted suicide -- no on SB 128."
Find your California legislators | Brown's phone 916-445-2841 / fax 916-558-3160
SAVECALIFORNIA.COM NEWS RELEASE
January 21, 2015 -- For Immediate Release
Don't Give Doctors A License to Kill in California
Thomasson: "Patients don't need to be killed with a drug overdose, they deserve counseling, referrals to natural medicine physicians, and pain management if needed. Suicide is not the answer to anyone's problems."
I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan;
and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion.
Hippocratic Oath
Sacramento, California -- SaveCalifornia.com, a longtime organization promoting moral virtues for children and families, urges all life-affirming Californians to oppose the Democrats' new "physician-assisted suicide" bill transforming physicians into killers.
"The State of California should not promote the killing of patients, but their physical or emotional healing," said Randy Thomasson, president of SaveCalifornia.com. "Instead of giving doctors a license to kill, the State should require that patients who hear the often-mistaken diagnosis of 'it's terminal' must be directed to alternative natural medicine, which has healed numerous people. And 'terminal' or not, all patients who are depressed deserve adequate counseling, because studies show their main concern is not pain control but about losing independence and activity. And any patient with pain should be offered adequate pain management. But above all, doctors must keep faith with the life-affirming principles of the Hippocratic Oath -- they must not exchange their healing mission for that of a hired killer."
In Oregon, where physician-assisted suicide has been implemented since 1997, it is reported that the law's purported "safeguards" aren't working:
However, publicized assisted suicide cases have proven:
* "Doctor shopping" is common. A network of assisted suicide proponents ensures that patients will receive assisted suicide, even when their family doctor knows their desire for death could have been alleviated.
* Familial pressure is applied on patients to commit assisted suicide.
* Patients suffering from depression and dementia are receiving physician-assisted suicide.
* Once receiving a drug overdose prescription from a pro-assisted suicide doctor, patients no longer receive concerned medical care, but instead are abandoned to die.
* While some pain-relieving and life-saving medications are not paid for by Oregon's Health Plan, assisted suicide is. In rejecting payment for these medications, the Health Department informs patients about the availability of assisted suicide.
* The "slippery slope" for illnesses which qualify for assisted suicide is a reality. Patients with diabetes have accessed Oregon's physician assisted suicide law.
Source: http://www.ortl.org/images/docs/assisted-suicide-2013.pdf
The number of fatal drug overdoses prescribed in Oregon has increased each year since the suicide law went into effect. Underlying illnesses making patients eligible for the lethal prescription include diabetes, benign or uncertain neoplasms [tumors], respiratory diseases, viral hepatitis and alcoholic liver disease.
Source (see page 7, footnote 6)
The Oregon-based Physicians for Compassionate Care Education Foundation has documented numerous problems with their state's physician-assisted suicide practices.
"The evidence shows patients don't need to be killed with a drug overdose -- they deserve counseling, referrals to natural medicine physicians, and pain management if needed," Thomasson said. "Suicide is not the answer to anyone's problems. A State that has compassion for people created in the image of God, who are sick, vulnerable, or elderly, should never cross the line by promoting or administering death."
-- end --
SaveCalifornia.com is a leading West Coast nonprofit, nonpartisan organization standing strong for moral virtues for the common good. We represent children and families in the areas of marriage and family, parental rights, the sanctity of human life, religious freedom, financial freedom, and back-to-basics education.
