The move capped a long and sometimes tortuous effort to get legislation through the state Legislature, where opponents of elective death managed to mount a successfully targeted opposition that was eventually overcome.

Initially, the bill’s progress was smoothed when the California Medical Association ceased its opposition, as the Huffington Post noted, leading state Senators to pass it this June. “But before it could be brought to a vote in the Assembly, lawmakers abandoned the bill in committee amid opposition from the Catholic church as well as disability rights advocacy groups.” That led supporters to rejigger the legislation in special session last month, “adding a sunset provision so that the bill will expire in 10 years unless legislators vote to extend it. The bill passed in committee by a 10-2 vote before going on to the full legislative body for consideration.”

Murky ethics

Brown’s logic for accepting the bill, conveyed in an unusually personal signing statement, hinted at the murky ethical territory into which the assisted-suicide movement has plunged officials in multiple states. While advocates characteristically consider at least some terminally ill patients to possess a human right to end their own lives, Brown seemed intent on sidestepping that question in favor of a more agnostic view.

“In the end, I was left to reflect on what I would want in the face of my own death,” he wrote, CNN noted. “I do not know what I would do if I were dying in prolonged and excruciating pain. I am certain, however, that it would be a comfort to be able to consider the options afforded by this bill.”

As ABC News reported, Brown “said he consulted a Catholic bishop, two of his own doctors and friends ‘who take varied, contradictory and nuanced positions.'” Traditionally, elective suicide has been seen as a moral problem for patients as well as doctors, famously sworn to “first, do no harm.”

But that once-sturdy consensus has begun to collapse, perhaps especially in socially libertarian states like California. “Roughly two-thirds of U.S. adults (68 percent) say doctors should be allowed by law to assist patients who are terminally ill and living in severe pain to commit suicide,” Pew observed. “That’s an increase of 10 percentage points in just one year, and 17 points over two years.” Meanwhile, “a new Field Poll released Monday found two-thirds of California registered voters supported a proposal to give patients the right to obtain life-ending drugs, with support cutting across most religious and political party lines,” according to the San Jose Mercury News.

Legal wrangling

Yet California’s version of legalized assisted suicide did not reach as broadly as the majority public opinion may wish. “The new law requires two doctors to determine that a patient has six months or less to live before the lethal drugs can be prescribed. Patients also must be physically able to swallow the medication themselves and must have the mental capacity to make medical decisions,” NPR noted. “One of the meetings must be private, with only the patient and the physician present. […] Patients must also reaffirm in writing that they intend to take the medication within 48 hours.”

Opponents have warned that those safeguards aren’t enough to prevent abuse. “Tim Rosales, spokesman for the Californians Against Assisted Suicide Coalition, said opponents of the law aren’t giving up their fight,” the Mercury News reported. “They vowed Monday to explore their options, including a referendum or legal action to repeal the law.”

Rosales and his allies were bolstered by the trouble assisted suicide has encountered in the courts. “It was permitted in New Mexico until August, when an appeals court in the state reversed a lower court ruling that had established physician-assisted suicide as a right,” NPR added. “The New Mexico Supreme Court is now hearing that case.”

After the Assembly greenlit the legislation 44-35, the state Senate cleared it with a 23-14 vote, CNN noted, bringing to a climax a controversy begun almost a year after the death of terminal brain cancer sufferer Brittany Maynard moved from California to Oregon in order to legally end her life before succumbing to the disease.

With passions running high on both sides, “Brown has not indicated where he stands on the issue, nor whether he will sign or veto the bill,” KQED reported. “If he does nothing, after 30 days the bill will become law.”

“If Gov. Jerry Brown signs the bill, California would become the fifth state to allow doctors to prescribe lethal medication to terminally ill patients who request it, after Oregon, Washington, Vermont and Montana.”

That, according to the New York Times, would triple the number of Americans who could successfully opt to go through with an assisted suicide. As is now routine with controversial California bills, supporters and opponents alike have suggested that Brown’s signature would set off a chain reaction of similar legislation around the country. Already, the Times added, over half the nation’s states “have put forward bills this year to legalize some kind of assisted suicide, according to the Death With Dignity National Center,” although as yet not one bill has made its way into law.

A second try

The bill, known by the special designation ABX2-15, followed in the wake of an effort that fell victim to objections focused on key members of the Assembly Committee on Health. Much like that bill, ABX2-15, introduced by Assemblywoman Susan Eggman, D-Stockton, “would allow some dying patients to end their lives through lethal doses of medication, as long as medication is self-administered; the patient is mentally competent; and two physicians confirm the prognosis that the patient has six months or less to live,” as California Healthline observed.

“Several amendments were added to the bill in the special session, including one that would require patients to reaffirm their consent within 48 hours prior to taking the lethal dose of medication. The bill’s authors also added an amendment that would sunset the law after a decade, making it effective only until Jan. 1, 2026, if passed. However, the state Legislature could vote to extend it.”

Reading the tea leaves

Observers looking for clues on Brown’s disposition noted that he has shown some dissatisfaction with the circumstances under which the legislation was advanced. As the Washington Times noted, “he has taken issue with moving the bill during the current special session, which is supposed to be focused on health care financing instead of the regular session.” Outside critics echoed Brown’s concern. “Californians Against Assisted Suicide spokesperson Tim Rosales said the bill was being rushed through the Legislature’s special session,” CNN reported.

Those opposed to the bill have placed their faith in Brown’s personal religious history. “Everybody’s interested because Jerry Brown’s a Catholic,” political analyst Allan Hoffenblum told the Times, referencing Brown’s well-known time in seminary.

Ongoing litigation

The development did not slow activists’ push for immediate change. In San Diego, the Fourth District Court of Appeal heard plaintiff Christy O’Donnell’s claim that the state should allow her to seek assistance in ending her life in advance of her death from lung cancer that has spread throughout her body. Through Attorney General Kamala Harris’s lawyers, the state countered that “long-standing California law in matters related to terminal illness” should not be swept aside, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Harris’s office further argued that O’Donnell’s request for accelerated review also be denied, according to the Chronicle, with the usual appellate process sometimes taking more than a year.

Gov. Jerry Brown likes to brag how he attended a Catholic Jesuit seminary half a century ago. Now and then he even drops a few lines of Latin, showing us how Superior he is to the rabble who attended government schools.

Catholics should be happy that he never was ordained. Because now he’s attacking religious liberty for them and everybody else. Brown has sided with President Barack Obama in insisting that the Obamacare Soviet medical scheme must include contraception coverage, even for those Catholic institutions that say it goes against their faith.

Brown said of Catholic leaders resisting Obama’s tyranny:

“They’re so far out of it. They’re talking about birth control. I remember when I was in the seminary in 1960 and Dr. [John] Rock invented the pill and this was a controversy. Now, we’re 50 years later … This is crazy.”

No, they’re not talking about “birth control,” which the U.S. Supreme Court said is a right in the 1965 Griswold vs. Connecticut decision.

They’re talking about freedom — the freedom to be left alone to follow their own religious practices without interference from a tyrannical government.

Brown, after leaving the seminary, went to Yale Law School. So presumably he read the First Amendment. Here it is:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Brown and Obama clearly are violating the “free exercise” of “religion.”

The California Constitution also stipulates, in Article I, Section 4:

“Free exercise and enjoyment of religion without discrimination or preference are guaranteed.”

Brown clearly is violating the “Free exercise of religion” while conducting “discrimination” against one religion, in this case Catholics.

Violating Conscience

The Obama-Brown assault on religious liberty was made clear by Cardinal Francis George of Chicago:

“This year, the Catholic Church in the United States is being told she must ‘give up’ her health care institutions, her universities and many of her social service organizations. This is not a voluntary sacrifice. It is the consequence of the already much discussed Department of Health and Human Services regulations now filed and promulgated for implementation beginning Aug. 1 of this year.

“Why does a governmental administrative decision now mean the end of institutions that have been built up over several generations from small donations, often from immigrants, and through the services of religious women and men and others who wanted to be part of the church’s mission in healing and education? Catholic hospitals, universities and social services have an institutional conscience, a conscience shaped by Catholic moral and social teaching. The HHS regulations now before our society will make it impossible for Catholic institutions to follow their conscience.”

He then makes a crucial point about the different kinds of “religious liberty”:

“The provision of health care should not demand ‘giving up’ religious liberty. Liberty of religion is more than freedom of worship. Freedom of worship was guaranteed in the Constitution of the former Soviet Union. You could go to church, if you could find one. The church, however, could do nothing except conduct religious rites in places of worship-no schools, religious publications, health care institutions, organized charity, ministry for justice and the works of mercy that flow naturally from a living faith. All of these were co-opted by the government. We fought a long cold war to defeat that vision of society.”

So, that’s the choice America faces today: The Obama-Brown-Soviet view of religious “liberty,” or the real religious liberty guaranteed by the First Amendment. No amount of Jesuitical gibberish by Brown changes that.

March 9, 2012