Lawmaker warns about 'back-door' to euthanasia

A state senator in California has launched a campaign to urge Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to veto a plan approved by the legislature because he describes it as a "back-door" to legalized euthanasia.

The legislation is called the "Terminal Patients' Right to Know End of Life Options" Act, and WND already has reported how it would allow patients under certain conditions to be drugged and then starved to death.

"AB 2747 allows a physician assistant or a nurse to opine that a patient is 'terminal,' and then push for unnatural death by 'palliative sedation,'" charged Randy Thomasson, chief of the Campaign for Children and Families. "Depressed patients who succumb to this pressure will be drugged unconscious and die from dehydration."

Now state Sen. Sam Aanestad, R-Grass Valley, a licensed oral surgeon, says he's urging the governor to veto the proposal.

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"The so-called end of life options act interferes with the medical care of people who just received the worst news of their lives," Aanestad said in a statement sent to WND. "State government has no business intruding upon the doctor-patient relationship at that time, yet that is exactly what this bill does."

He said the bill was sponsored by a group called Compassion and Choices, which formerly was known as the Hemlock Society and has advocated for physician-assisted suicide legislation in the past. A founder of the group has praised Dr. Jack Kevorkian for helping more than 100 people die.

"I want the governor to clearly know that this measure cloaked as compassion is actually sponsored by a group of people who want to give physicians the legal right to take part in the death of another person," said Aanestad. "Failing to do that in the past, they have introduced this measure as a small first step which looks innocent, but opens the door to further 'end of life' intrusions."

Further, he said, "It also bothers me that this legislation is a back-door approach for advocates of euthanasia. AB 2747 contains language that can easily be amended in the future to include other treatments than those it now includes – treatments like those advocated by the bill's sponsor, the former Hemlock Society."

Aanestad noted dozens of individuals and groups representing cancer patients, minority rights groups, members of religious communities and hospitals spoke before the Senate Health Committee in opposition to the idea.

Aanestad said he believes patients facing terminal illness need information based on who they are as individuals, not an intrusion into their relationship with their doctor.

"Patients don't need their doctors to dispense a laundry list developed by Sacramento politicians," he said. "It's downright cruel to take a list of treatments that may not even apply to a patient and have the doctor say 'here, this is what the State of California legislates I must tell you when you find out that you're dying and you ask me what to do.'"

Annestad said part of the reason he became an oral surgeon was because of his belief that serving God means valuing human life.

"Patients facing a terminal illness have many needs. Among them are comfort, pain relief and information to make critical decisions," he said. "They need dignity, respect and the support of those who love and care for them. They need prayer and the help of clergy, family and friends. What they don’t need is an intrusion into their relationship with their doctor."

He said the requirement that doctors tell terminal patients "would have to be told that they could be sedated into a coma and stop eating and drinking."

"It bothers me that AB 2747 leaves no option for the compassion of a doctor who knows her patient best. A cancer doctor caring for a depressed patient who says 'What can I do?' would have no recourse other than to do exactly as the bill mandates – give the information the California Legislature says she needs when they say she needs it," he said.

Forty-two Democrats in California voted in favor of the plan: 30 Republicans and two Democrats opposed the plan.

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Previous stories:

California plans to drug depressed patients to death

State denies cancer treatment, offers suicide instead

Wikipedia publishes suicide instructions

Plan transforms doctors from healers to killers

'Right-to-die' cards for the healthy

It's sudden death in Vermont for assisted suicide proposal

Kevorkian: Terri a potential patient

TV to air suicide how-to show

'Peaceful pill' would give patients permanent rest

Californians warned of involuntary euthanasia

Vermont resurrects assisted suicide bill