California Right-to-Die Bill Advances

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SACRAMENTO, June 8, 2015 (ChurchMilitant.com) - Inspired by Brittany Maynard, California's End of Life Option Act, which allows doctors to prescribe suicide inducing medication to terminally ill patients, passed the state Senate by a vote of 23 to 14 last Thursday.

The law, which had previously only been a pet project of far leftists, took serious flight last year when Brittany Maynard, the 29-year-old Bay Area resident diagnosed with brain cancer, made her cause for assisted suicide a national sensation when she moved to Oregon, where it had been legal since 1997, and committed suicide with the help of physicians. She has now since become a poster-child for the assisted suicide/euthanasia cause. Her family has since been lobbying California to follow Oregon down the rabbit hole into the abyss.

"Brittany would be very proud to see the monumental shift occurring on the End of Life Option legislation," Maynard's husband, Dan Diaz, said in a statement.

Defenses against the law were also severely weakened last month when the California Medical Association, representative to more than 40,000 California-based physicians, dropped its decades-long opposition to assisted suicide, saying it was a "very personal" decision they couldn't interfere with anymore. The Association of Northern California Oncologists and the Medical Oncology Association of Southern California still oppose the measure.

If passed, the law will effectively allow terminally ill patients to commit suicide with the help of their doctors if the following criteria are met: "the patient has received a prognosis of less than six months to live from two physicians, has submitted a written request for the medication, has made two oral requests to a physician at least 15 days apart and has the mental capacity to make decisions about their health on their own."

The bill now heads to the State Assembly. If passed, Governor Jerry Brown has not indicated whether he will sign it into law.

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