California doctors who object to assisted suicide are fighting an amended state law that implicates them in their patients’ intentional deaths.
They are suing California officials, including Attorney General Rob Bonta, Department of Public Health Director Tomas Aragon, and Medical Board members to block SB 380, which made it easier for patients to commit suicide under the End of Life Options Act that took effect in 2016.
The original law issued a broad exemption for healthcare providers, granting them a liability shield for “refusing to inform” patients about their right to physician-assisted suicide and “not referring” patients to physicians who will assist in their suicides.
The amended law removed it, leaving providers vulnerable to “civil, criminal, administrative, disciplinary, employment, credentialing, professional discipline, contractual liability, or medical staff action, sanction, or penalty or other liability.”
Conscientious objectors are suffering irreparable harm to their free exercise of religion and speech, the suit claims, seeking an injunction and declaration that the law is unconstitutional under any application. California is infringing on their “right not to speak the State’s message on the subject of assisted suicide.”
The Alliance Defending Freedom is representing the Christian Medical and Dental Associations, which claims 90% of its 16,000 members would quit medicine rather than be subject to such laws, and its member Dr. Leslee Cochrane, executive director of the nonprofit Hospice of the Valleys, who said he’d either quit or leave California.
Signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last fall, SB 380 claims that “participating” in assisted suicide is “voluntary” but narrowly defines the former, depriving physicians of legal protection for refusal to take steps that authorize intentional killing.
They must document a patient’s request to die in that individual’s medical record, which satisfies the first of two required “oral requests” for a patient to obtain a prescription for lethal drugs. Physicians also must transfer those records to a second physician upon the patient’s request.
Participating also excludes “[d]iagnosing whether a patient has a terminal disease, informing the patient of the medical prognosis, or determining whether a patient has the capacity to make decisions,” and informing a patient about assisted suicide options.
This language concerned two legislative committees reviewing the bill.
The Senate Health Committee’s analysis noted the California Medical Association only supported the 2016 legislation because of its “true conscious objection and opt out” provision. The California Hospital Association flatly said it would oppose SB 380 with the narrow definition of “participating.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee’s analysis said the bill raises “constitutional questions with respect to freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion,” given that physicians face “exposure to liability” for not “affirmatively facilitating” a patient’s rights under the law.
The Assembly Judiciary Committee (AJC) analysis a few months later left out that concern, possibly because the bill had been amended by then. The lawsuit claims the revision did not change the exceptions to “participating” but organized them differently.
Continuing a pattern going back to assisted suicide legislation in the 1990s, advocates for disabled people opposed the California bill.
Disability Rights California objected to shortening the 15-day waiting period under the original law to 48 hours and removal of the “final attestation” by the patient. The latter “puts patient autonomy at risk, opening the door to abuse by greedy heirs or abusive caregivers,” argued the DRC.
The Senate floor analysis, the last hurdle before passage, records comments from the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, which says its community is “full of individuals who have been misdiagnosed as terminally ill.”
The bill removes protections such as more and better-trained medical professionals to “judge a patient’s prognosis and assess their decision-making capacity,” and it includes “extraordinarily little monitoring, data, and investigation of abuse,” even less so than similar laws in Oregon and Washington, the group said.
Terminally ill patients “can have very dramatic changes in disposition once their pain is controlled,” according to the lawsuit, citing individual plaintiff Cochrane’s hospice experience.
Referring to the shortened waiting period, he said patients in severe pain can suffer “mental, emotional, and spiritual exhaustion” for more than two days at a time that “leaves them vulnerable to being easily manipulated by family members” against their own wishes. This happened to at least one patient with “questionable mental capacity,” Cochrane said.
HD Editor’s Note: Why Is This News Biblically Relevant?
A Decision Magazine article titled “A Life Unworthy of Life,” describes the dark stepping stones that result from a government and culture which devalues life.
“Lebensunwertes Leben is a chilling German phrase that means ‘life unworthy of life.’ It was coined in 1920 by German professors Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche, who thought that people with congenital, mental or developmental disabilities only burdened their families and the state. Hoche described such people as ‘human ballast’ and ’empty shells of human beings,'” the author explained. “That argument was the seed that grew into the horrific fruit of the Holocaust.”
“Before the Nazis built Auschwitz or perfected the gas chamber, there was Knauer, a baby born blind, missing a leg and part of an arm, and labeled an ‘idiot.’ When a family member requested a ‘mercy killing’ for Knauer, Hitler and his personal physician, Karl Brandt, directed doctors at the University of Leipzig to end Knauer’s life,” he described. “From 1939 to 1945, at least 5,000 other children would be killed in German hospitals. From killing children, the Nazi euthanasia program accelerated to killing adults, then prisoners, and finally Jews. Mass genocide was simply the logical conclusion following the premise that some human lives are unworthy of life.”
“Imagine living in such a barbaric society. The awful reality is that we already do,” the author lamented.
“How do doctors sworn to preserve life do the opposite?” He asked. “According to Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, who personally interviewed German physicians involved in mass killings, the fundamental shift happened when doctors convinced themselves that killing was healing.”
In Canada, which has the largest number of assisted suicide death in the world under “MAiD” (Medical Assistance In Dying), numerous reports have emerged showing doctors pressuring, manipulating, and even coercing the terminally ill, venerable, and disabled to expedite their deaths.
In his letter to Timothy, the apostle Paul lists a “loss of natural affection” to be a key indicator that the world is nearing the return of Christ (2 Timothy 3:3).
Although the Bible does not explicitly mention the word ’euthanasia,’ one account in scripture provides Christians keen insight into this issue.
In the Book of 1st and 2nd Samuel in the Old Testament, we read about the assisted suicide of Saul, the first king of Israel.
King Saul was severely wounded in a battle between Israel and the Philistines (1 Samuel 31:1-3). Worried that the opposing army would find him, Saul asked his armorbearer to take his sword and kill him (1 Samuel 31:4).
1 Samuel 31:3-4 KJV – “And the battle went sore against Saul, and the archers hit him; and he was sore wounded of the archers. Then said Saul unto his armourbearer, Draw thy sword, and thrust me through therewith; lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and abuse me. But his armourbearer would not; for he was sore afraid…”
Although the armourbearer refused, a passing Amalekite complied with his request and slew the king, seeing that his wound was likely terminal.
2 Samuel 1:9-10 KJV – “He said unto me again, Stand, I pray thee, upon me, and slay me: for anguish is come upon me, because my life is yet whole in me. So I stood upon him, and slew him, because I was sure that he could not live after that he was fallen…”
Believing he had done the fallen king an excellent service, the Amalekite came to David (who would be king after Saul) and told him all that had transpired (2 Samuel 1:1-10). However, instead of being rewarded for his actions as he seemingly thought he deserved, the man was executed for murdering the king (2 Samuel 1:11-16).
1 Samuel 1:16 KJV – “And David said unto him, Thy blood be upon thy head; for thy mouth hath testified against thee, saying, I have slain the Lord’s anointed.”
Through the lens of this Biblical example, we have precedent for why euthanasia, i.e. doctor-assisted suicide, should be considered murder.
The case in defense of euthanasia contains three arguments strikingly reminiscent of those that the Amalekite used to justify his actions:
- By his understanding, Saul’s wounds were terminal.
- Saul’s death by his hand would have alleviated his earthly suffering and provided him a more dignified end than if the Philistines did it.
- Saul wanted to die and asked for his assistance in doing so.
Nevertheless, those circumstances did not change the fact that he was guilty of murdering Saul, and therefore, he was subsequently punished for doing so.
From the opening chapter of Genesis, Scripture declares the profound value God places on the lives of Humans, who He made in His image (Genesis 1:27). God’s desire for humans to have “life” is showcased in the face that He sent His only son, so that through Him we could obtain life eternally.
1 John 5:11-12 KJV – “And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.”
“We can help terminally ill people understand what faces them on the other side of their tombstone,” Joni Eareckson Tada underscored in an article for Decision Magazine. “Jesus is the only One who conquered the grave and opened the path to life eternal. How awful if people choose three grams of phenobarbital in their veins, only to face a Christ-less eternity!”
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