We recently saw some bad news come out of the California Assembly, with the passage of of a bill requiring pregnancy centers to advertise abortion.
Last month, a bill legalizing physician-assisted suicide passed the California Senate along party lines. When it looked like the bill would not get enough votes in the Assembly, and a vote scheduled for June 23 was postponed, pro-lifers claimed victory. But, as an updated article for LifeNews.com shows, the battle isn’t over with another vote possible on July 7.
With any hope however, the pressure which made it seem like there would not be enough votes will hold. One such figure credited with speaking out against the bill is Archbishop Jose Gomez, of Los Angeles:
“It is a failure of public leadership and moral imagination to respond to human suffering by making it easier for people to kill themselves,” Archbishop Gomez said. “Helping someone to die-even if that person asks for that help-is still killing. And killing is not compassion, it is killing.”
Archbishop Gomez has a point. It’s “a failure of public leadership” because as full as suffering as human lives may be, especially for those faced with terminal illness, we should be able to expect more from our leaders than such a way out. And, it certainly is a failure of “moral imagination.” For if we kill ourselves when life seems unbearable, we are giving up on our imagination of what we may be able to do with the time we have left.
While one certainly does not need to be Catholic or follow any kind of religion to oppose physician-assisted suicide, Townhall is following the bill and has pointed out that some are saying pressure from the Catholic Church may indeed be playing a role:
Sure enough, this week state Sens. Lois Wolk and Bill Monning, co-sponsors of the bill, had to pull a scheduled vote in the Assembly Health Committee and delay it until July 7 because, as the San Francisco Chronicle’s Melody Gutierrez reported, six committee Democrats are not on board. Five are members of the Latino caucus. Ergo the new spin on the bill, advanced by Wolk, is that the Roman Catholic Church, in all its might, is leaning on its flock to kill the bill.
Townhall suggests that “it doesn’t add up” to say the Church “has an outsize power.” And certainly there are other reasons for being opposed to the bill beyond religion. Opposition not only can transcend faith, but it can transcend party lines as well, regardless as to what the vote in the Senate may have been. Hopefully, whatever has been weighing on the hearts of those six Democrats, and any others uncertain about how to vote on the bill, will translate into a vote in favor of life on July 7.
Those who are residents of California may especially be instrumental about stopping this bill from becoming law, and restraining the agenda of the culture of death, no matter how the language is dressed up. They can find contact information for members of the California Assembly here.
