The new California assisted suicide law explicitly permits doctors and hospitals to declare assisted suicide free zones and engage in a policy of total non-cooperation with the death agenda.
Many of the state’s largest hospitals have opted out. But Samsun Clinic of Santa Barbara has bent the knee. From the Santa Barbara Independent story:
Dr. Fred Kass, a leading figure with the Cancer Center — which is affiliated with Sansum — added, “This is a difficult, somber decision. We’re programmed to want to live. But the Legislature voted to make this choice available. We have a responsibility to be faithful to what the Legislature enacted. I don’t think we can say, ‘Yeah, but not here.’”
You are letting the legislature dictate your medical ethics? What an abdication of professionalism.
Besides, as I said, the law is very clear on a right to refuse to participate in any way.
Refusing to acquiesce in the devolution of medical ethics represented by assisted suicide would send a powerful, life-affirming message that healthcare is about healing and palliating, not killing.
It would say that each human being has equal dignity, and that all–the sick and the well, the able bodied and the disabled–should receive suicide prevention, not facilitation.
Besides, prescribing a lethal overdose of poison isn’t practicing medicine any more than lethally injecting a murderer in an execution.