Assisting suicides is bad law, policy California Is Considering Creating an Oregon-Style System to End Lives.

Advocates of assisted suicide label hastened death a "compassionate choice." But such gooey euphemisms seek to hide the harsh truth: Assisted suicide isn't about caring; it is about the intentional ending of human lifean act barred by the Hippocratic Oath for more than 2,000 years.

We are told that assisted suicide would be restricted to cases of unbearable suffering. Yet, legislation in California to legalize assisted suicideAB651 by Assemblywoman Patty Bergcontains no such requirement. Nor does the law in Oregon, where doctors who assist suicides report that most patients do not seek death because of pain, but because they can no longer engage in enjoyable activities, fear losing dignity, or are worried about becoming burdens.

Don't get me wrong: These are important issues that cry out for proper care. Indeed, studies show that when these problems are addressed, suicidal desires almost always disappear.

While acknowledging the truth of the previous sentence, assisted-suicide proponents contend there will always be a few people who want assisted suicide, anyway. But placing California's seal of approval on some suicides would send an insidious message to dying patients that they are burdens; that their illness does make them less worthy of being loved; that they will die in agony. And it would signal the broader society, including young people, that suicide is right in some cases.

Legalizing assisted suicide would also be very risky. The Netherlands proves that when mercy killing is allowed for the few, it steadily spreads. In the past 30 years, Dutch doctors have gone from killing the terminally ill, to the disabled, and even to the depressed who aren't physically sick. Recent headlines report that infanticide of dying and disabled babies will soon be legalized by the Dutch Parliament.

Assisted-suicide boosters claim it would be different here and point to Oregon to show that there is no "slippery slope." But nobody knows what is actually going on in Oregon. The state conducts no independent reviews of assisted suicide, for example, to ensure that only dying patients receive lethal prescriptions. ...