A.B. 374: Ding Dong the Bill is Dead!

I just received a report that A.B. 374, which would legalize assisted suicide in California, does not have the votes to pass in the Assembly and hence, will not be brought up for a vote. This is a great, hard fought, victory for a strange bedfellow political coalition consisting of liberals and conservatives, the secular and the pious, pro life and pro choice, medical professionals and advocates for the poor. I don’t have a link to the story about it in the Sacramento Bee, but this is the gist:

Hotly contested legislation to allow doctors to prescribe fatal medication to terminally ill patients was shelved Thursday in the Assembly.

Assembly Bill 374 lacked enough votes for passage and time was running out, with the Assembly facing a Friday deadline for acting upon bills by its members.

“The people are there and the politicians aren’t,” said Will Shuck, chief of staff for Assemblywoman Patty Berg, a Eureka Democrat who helped write the bill.

AB 374 is dead for the year. It could be resurrected in January, Shuck said, but he is not sure whether that will happen.

A similar measure, one of the Legislature’s most hotly contested, died in a Senate committee last year.

It will be. Assisted suicide advocates are truly dedicated to their agenda. Still, as I have said, I think the next big battleground will be Washington State, where there will probably be an initiative on the issue next year.

I fully appreciate the reasons why people might be attracted to and support assisted suicide. But, as I discuss fully in Forced Exit, it is a siren song that, in my view, would crash our society on the rocks and expose the most defenseless among us to terrible exploitation.