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Celebrate the shelving of the assisted suicide expansion bill, SB 1196

Thursday, April 18, 2024, 11:42 am | Randy Thomasson

A great moral victory! SB 1196 giving killer drugs to MENTALLY or PHYSICALLY DISABLED — or to anybody with one of any of the thousands of INCURABLE diseases who rejects treatment and wants to die — has been shelved by its author, Democrat Party State Senator Catherine Blakespear of San Diego and Orange counties.

“Politico” broke the story April 17:
“At this point, there is a reluctance from many around me to take up this discussion, and the future is unclear,” Blakespear said in a statement. “The topic, however, remains of great interest to me and to those who have supported this bill thus far.” Her bill would have expanded the state’s current End Of Life Options Act to allow patients without a specific prognosis to request life-ending drugs if they are suffering from a “grievous and irremediable medical condition.” Current law in California and all other states says patients can only request these drugs when they have six months left to live.

Washington Post, 2016: “We generally say: Several thousand diseases affect humans of which only about 500 have any U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved treatment,” said Cindy McConnell, a spokeswoman at NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS).

SaveCalifornia.com, 2024: Under SB 1196, if you’re 18, and have an “incurable” illness or disease of any kind (including an incurable sexually-transmitted infection) that limits your “capability” to any extent, and you say you’re “suffering,” and feel that life is “intolerable,” and claim that continued treatment is not “acceptable” to you, and declare you’re not “willing to attempt” other treatments, you get to either swallow a lethal dose of drugs or be injected with the lethal drugs with the “assistance” of “a health care provider placing an intravenous catheter…into the qualified individual’s vein.”

THANK YOU to everyone who did anything to oppose this devilish, inhuman bill!

How was this very dangerous “expansion” of “assisted suicide” defeated? The main reason is the pro-assisted suicide organization, “Compassion & Choices,” opposed getting rid of their (the State of California’s since 2016) “terminal” prognosis of having “less than six months to live” standard — and they let the Democrat committee members know it.

However, unlike this pro-euthanasia group, SaveCalifornia.com rallied phone calls in opposition to SB 1196 because we know:

Euthanasia, “the administration of a lethal agent…to a patient,” is murder
It is inhuman to “permit” elderly or disabled people to dehydrate to death
The Word of God consistently commands the protection of innocent human life
Choice is an illusion in assisted suicide and euthanasia bills and laws

For these reasons and more, SaveCalifornia.com urges all people of moral conscience to steadfastly protect innocent human life from conception to natural death.

Because God created human beings in his image, every human life from conception to death bears the image of God and has inestimable worth (Genesis 1:27). Therefore, Christians must be committed to a consistent ethic of life that safeguards the essential nature of human life at all stages, with a special concern to protect the lives of the most vulnerable. The unborn, the very young, the aged, those living in poverty, the chronically or terminally ill, those with disabilities and those with genetic diseases deserve our particular care and protection. Our public policy agenda should reflect these broad commitments.
“Safeguarding the Nature and Sanctity of Human Life,” National Association of Evangelicals

Posted in Abortion, America, Assisted Suicide, Bible, California Bills, California Legislation, California Legislature, Christians, Creator God, Democrats, Future, Life, Morality, SaveCalifornia.com, Science, Voters | Comments Off on Celebrate the shelving of the assisted suicide expansion bill, SB 1196

BILLIONS of homeless funds down the drain

Friday, April 12, 2024, 7:37 pm | Randy Thomasson

If you’ve supported the Democrat state politicians’ $24 BILLION already spent on “homelessness,” or Newsom’s $10+ BILLION for “free homeless housing”(Prop. 1), you’ve flushed away big money.

The California State Auditor on April 9 issued a scathing report that basically asks, “Where’s the money gone?”

Democrat Party Governor Gavin Newsom appoints the co-chairs of the “California Interagency Council on Homelessness.” Yet the State Auditor, also appointed by Newsom, says the “council” hasn’t been doing its job:

“(The council) has not tracked and reported on the State’s funding for homelessness programs statewide since its 2023 assessment covering fiscal years 2018–19 through 2020–21. Currently, it has no plans to perform a similar assessment in the future. In the absence of an up-to-date assessment, the State and its policymakers are likely to struggle to understand homelessness programs’ ongoing costs and achieved outcomes,” reads the report. “(It) has neither ensured the accuracy of the information in the state data system, nor has it used this information to evaluate homelessness programs’ success.”

As veteran California newspaper columnist Dan Walters writes:

The number of homeless Californians has increased by 50% in the last decade and 20% since Newsom became governor in 2019, despite the state’s spending about $20 billion on the various anti-homelessness programs during the last five years.

Meanwhile, the proliferation of anti-homelessness programs continues. Just last month, voters – by the thinnest of margins – approved Newsom’s multibillion-dollar plan to overhaul mental health treatment in California, including providing more housing for those with ailments.

The fact that his measure, Proposition 1, barely survived despite many millions of dollars being spent on the campaign for it, indicates anew that Californians are growing weary of politicians’ promises to end the crisis.

The new audit implies that the public’s skepticism is well-founded. If the agency created to coordinate homelessness responses is falling short of its mission, why should we think that any specific programs are having a lasting impact?

Critically-thinking Californians, along with SaveCalifornia.com, knew Gavin Newsom’s Prop. 1 was a scam, with zero requirements for transients to go to counseling, classes, or training. And now we know even more, don’t we?

See my March 25 blog, “Newsom snookered voters to attract transients worldwide“

…the state is spending money faster than it can track it, that the money being spent is exorbitant, that spending money on homelessness, at least in California, actually increases the problem due to the induced demand (people from out of state coming for the benefits and yes it is a very high percentage,) and that the homeless-industrial complex – which stands between the state and the homeless person – is hoovering up vast amounts of cash with little or no oversight.
“California State Auditor’s scathing homeless report: Where did the money go?”, California Globe, April 10, 2024

Posted in America, Ballot, California Governor, Crime, Culture, Democrats, Drug Abuse, Employment, Fighting for what's right, Future, Gavin Newsom, Morality, SaveCalifornia.com, Taxes, Transients, Voters | Comments Off on BILLIONS of homeless funds down the drain

ALERT: Oppose ‘assisted suicide’ for mentally or physically disabled (including diabetes, asthma, or being 18 with an ‘incurable’ STD)

Monday, April 8, 2024, 8:34 am | Randy Thomasson

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN TO TAKE ACTION

There are nearly 100 known “diseases” worldwide that the medical establishment has deemed “incurable.”

These include diseases, infections, or illnesses that older teenagers and young adults can have, including obesity, asthma, herpes simplex, irritable bowel syndrome, joint pain, and psoriasis, and congenital anomalies, such as cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, scoliosis, type 1 diabetes, and hearing loss.

What’s more, there are several thousand “incurable” diseases worldwide. As the liberal-establishment Washington Post reported in 2016: “We generally say: Several thousand diseases affect humans of which only about 500 have any U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved treatment,” said Cindy McConnell, a spokeswoman at NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS).

But did you know that if the Democrat Party legislators’ new “assisted suicide” bill passes, patients with any of these “incurable” maladies are permitted to obtain a lethal dose of drugs for committing “assisted suicide”?

SB 1196 would spawn a broad, new death culture, where physically or mentally disabled Californians would be offered “assistance” to die. How horrible to offer “assisted suicide” to a depressed person!

And for those who want to focus on dementia patients, can you imagine the shaky “consent” they would be coerced to give? Realize “self-administration” of a lethal dose isn’t necessarily true when, under SB 1196, a witness is not required, nor are authorities permitted to charge any “assistant” — not even legal heirs who “assist” with the ingestion of the lethal dose — with murder. How certain is “choice” when the final choice to ingest lethal drugs is legally hidden?

Under SB 1196, feelings, not fact, will be the standard. Because being depressed and thinking life is “intolerable” and not “acceptable” would permit Californians with any incurable disability or illness to be offered suicide rather than counseling. And ironically, this is happening when effective pain compliance is readily available.

SB 1196 permits the “assisted suicide” of teenagers, since at age 18, you can qualify. It says so right at the top of the bill:

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:

SECTION 1. Section 443.1 of the Health and Safety Code is amended to read:

443.1. As used in this part, the following definitions shall apply:

(a) “Adult” means an individual 18 years of age or older.

Therefore, under SB 1196, if you’re 18, and have an “incurable” illness or disease of any kind (including an incurable* and possibly fatal sexually-transmitted infection**) that limits your “capability” to any extent, and you say you’re “suffering,” and feel that life is “intolerable,” and claim that continued treatment is not “acceptable” to you, and declare you’re not “willing to attempt” other treatments, you get to either swallow a lethal dose of drugs or be injected with the lethal drugs with the “assistance” of “a health care provider placing an intravenous catheter…into the qualified individual’s vein.”

*Incurable, viral sexually transmitted infections (STIs) include Hepatitis B, herpes, HIV, HPV

**Research has found several STIs that can cause death in women ages 15-44: syphilis, HPV, HIV, hepatitis, genital herpes, gonorrhea, chlamydia

See the loose, subjective, overly-broad words and phrases in SB 1196, as decribed by the Democrat-controlled Legislative Counsel’s office:

This bill would replace the term “terminal disease” for purposes of the act with “grievous and irremediable medical condition,” defined as a medical condition that (1) is a serious and incurable illness or disease, (2) has placed the individual in a state of irreversible decline in capability and the individual’s suffering is palpable without prospect of improvement, (3) is causing the individual to endure physical suffering due to the illness, disease, or state of decline that is intolerable to the individual and cannot be relieved in a manner the individual deems acceptable, and there is no proven treatment for the individual’s situation that the individual has not attempted or is willing to attempt due to the nature or side effects of the treatment, and (4) after taking into account all of the individual’s medical circumstances, it is reasonably foreseeable that the condition will become the individual’s natural cause of death, as specified. The bill would, for purposes of the act, include a diagnosis of dementia as a grievous and irremediable medical condition, if the individual meets specified capacity requirements. The bill would specify that a sole diagnosis of a mental disorder is not a grievous and irremediable medical condition. The bill would also expand the definition of “mental health specialist” to include neurologists. The bill would additionally authorize the self-administration of an aid-in-dying drug through intravenous injection.

PLEASE ACT NOW

Don’t let California replace fact with feelings about whether a lethal dose of drugs can be given to depressed teenagers and adults.

There is a chance to defeat SB 1196, since the leading assisted-suicide group, “Compassion & Choices” opposes it, and so do some disabled rights groups. The loose and very broad language and definitions have made SB 1196 a very poorly-written bill.

STEP 1: Please call and email your own state senator to say, “Oppose SB 1196 as amended April 4. This radical bill would permit a depressed 18-year-old with an incurable STD or other incurable disability to obtain a lethal dose of drugs. Protect depressed or disabled Californians from deadly coercion. Oppose SB 1196.”

STEP 2: Please also leave easy voicemail messages for the 11-member State Senate Health Committee before its April 22 hearing on SB 1196. Call Monday through Friday from 7pm to 8am and all weekend. Unless you live in a senator’s district, when you leave your afterhours voicemail message (the same suggested message as above), do not provide your name or location (if you do, they’ll trash your message).

9 DEMOCRATS

Richard Roth (Chair) 916-651-4031 Capitol | 951-680-6750 district
Steve Glazer 916-651-4007 Capitol | 925-258-1176 district
Lena Gonzalez 916-651-4033 Capitol | 562-256-7921 district
Melissa Hurtado 916-651-4016 Capitol | 559-924-1201 district
Monique Limón 916-651-4019 Capitol | 805-965-0862 district
Caroline Menjivar 916-651-4020 Capitol | 818-901-5588 district
Susan Rubio 916-651-4022 Capitol | 626-430-2499 district
Lola Smallwood-Cuevas 916-651-4028 Capitol | 213-745-6656 district
Scott Wiener 916-651-4011 Capitol | 415 557-1300 district

2 REPUBLICANS: URGE THEM TO SPEAK UP IN COMMITTE TO EXPOSE SB 1196

Janet Nguyen (Vice Chair) 916-651-4036 Capitol | 714-374-4000 district
Shannon Grove 916-651-4012 Capitol | 661-323-0443 district

“You shall not murder.”
The Bible, Exodus 20:13

Posted in Assisted Suicide, California Bills, California Legislation, California Legislature, Children, Christians, Churches, Creator God, Crime, Culture, Democrats, Fighting for what's right, Good Science, Life, SaveCalifornia.com | Comments Off on ALERT: Oppose ‘assisted suicide’ for mentally or physically disabled (including diabetes, asthma, or being 18 with an ‘incurable’ STD)