Under A.B. 374, nursing homes, hospices, group homes, rehabilitation centers, and other facilities (except acute care hospitals) cannot prevent assisted suicide from taking place in their facilities. This would include those with religious objections, since only acute care hospitals are authorized to refuse assisted suicide on their premises.
The key sections are 7198 (b) and (e):
“(b) No professional organization or association, or heath care provider, may subject a person to censure, discipline, suspension, loss of license, loss of privileges, loss of membership, or other penalty for participating or refusing to participate in good faith compliance with this chapter.” (My emphasis.)
Now, here’s where (e) comes in. It permits acute care hospitals to refuse to permit assisted suicide in the facility. “(e) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a general acute care hospital, as defined in subdivision (a) of Section 1250, may prohibit a licensed physician from carrying out a patient’s request under this chapter on the premises of the hospital if the hospital has notified the licensed physician of its policy regarding this chapter.”
Under 1250 (a) an acute care hospital is defined as, ” a health facility having a duly constituted governing body with overall administrative and professional responsibility and an organized medical staff that provides 24-hour inpatient care, including the following basic services: medical, nursing, surgical, anesthesia, laboratory, radiology, pharmacy, and dietary services.”
This would appear to mean that assisted suicide could not be prevented from occurring on the premises of nursing homes, hospices, rehabilitation facilities, group homes, etc.—whether or not they have a religious or moral objection to assisted suicide—and staff doctors or those with privileges cannot be sanctioned in any way for participating in the assisted suicides of patients in these objecting facilities.
The culture of death brooks no dissent!
HT: Rita Marker
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…
