Not content with legalizing assisted suicide for the terminally ill if they independently decide they want hastened death, the California Legislature has voted to allow people to encourage and persuade the dying to take prescribed poison pills. AB 282 states:
Section 401 of the Penal Code is amended to read:
(a) Every Any person who deliberately aids, advises, or encourages another to commit suicide is guilty of a felony.
(b) A person whose actions are compliant with the provisions of the End of Life Option Act (Part 1.85 (commencing with Section 443) of Division 1 of the Health and Safety Code) shall not be prosecuted under this section.
In other words, if someone — say, a relative due to inherit money, a caregiver tired of the responsibility, an assisted-suicide ideologue, a doctor or nurse, heck anyone for any reason — encourages, advises, pressures, guilts, convinces, cajoles, and/or actively aids a dying person to commit assisted suicide under the California law, the persuader cannot be prosecuted.
Talk about exposing the vulnerable dying to abuse!
The bill still has to go back to the Assembly. But that house already passed a very similar bill.
Of course, Jerry Brown could always veto . . .
Ow! It it brings tears to my eyes when I laugh that hard.