The Suicide Senator

Dianne Feinstein has endorsed AB 651, which would legalize physician-assisted suicide. Reading her letter is a case study in spin and ignorance—exactly what we see from Senator Feinstein in the cloning issue—as I describe fully in Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World.

And now, she pushes for California to give its seal of approval to some suicides. Here, in part, is what she wrote:

“When terminally-ill patients are considering their-end-of-life options, they want to discuss them with their family, friends and their physicians—people they trust—and government should not stand in the way.”

Government doesn’t stand in the way now. People can talk about “options” all they want. But doctors cannot intentionally help kill their patients. That is not the same thing at all. Indeed, if someone is suicidal, they should discuss it with their doctor so interventions can help ease the suicidal desire. Moreover, with assisted suicide, people may go to doctors whom they have never met before in order to get lethal prescriptions when their own doctors say no—as they often do now in Oregon. That is pure Kevorkianism.

“Recently, in Oregon v. Gonzales, the Supreme Court established that State legislatures have the prerogative to enact laws on certain end-of-life issues,”—by which she means assisted suicide. Hogwash, as I have written at length. Indeed, the Court ruled that the Feds could outlaw the use of controlled substances for use in assisted suicide.

Then Feinstein mouths the usual platitudes about death with dignity and safeguards to protect against abuse, the usual propaganda. I keep thinking I like Senator Feinstein. I just can’t figure out why.