Assembly Bill 654- Calif. Assisted Suicide! Californians Need to Defeat It!

Assemblywoman Patty Berg and Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, crafted Assembly Bill 654, the "California Compassionate Choice Act," after a similar Oregon bill. It would allow patients with a prognosis of six months or fewer to live to request a prescription for lethal medication.

On Wednesday People ranging from Parents to Seniors came together to protest.

Protester Allen Rode said he was particularly concerned about the economic ramifications of the bill. Since the cost of a lethal medication would be less than the cost of health care over the longer term, it's possible that the bill could mean economic pressures.

"We feel that if this were to pass and assisted suicide becomes legal, that the poor, the disabled, the senior citizens -- those who cannot afford health care will be jeopardized," he said.

Attorney Bill Bertain said he worried that the bill would lead to further acceptance of assisted suicide and eventually outright killing people seen as unproductive.

one priest in attendance, the Rev. Ron Serban of St. Bernard's Church, said his own opposition to the bill came from personal experience as much as church doctrine.
he has seen people recover who had been considered near death. The experience, he said, convinced him that patients and families shouldn't make hasty decisions when a person is ill.

"We don't know what God is doing with that person,"

Read It