By Dave Andrusko

We have posted or reposted literally hundreds of stories about assisted suicide. I’ve relied on Wesley J. Smith and Alex Schadenberg for their keen insights not only in tracking its spread, but also into what powers this juggernaut.

The common denominator is almost always—okay, always— illustrated by the metaphor of the camel who sticks his nose  under the tent. Meaning that if someone can get a part of his way in, he will soon get himself the rest of the way in– and at a pace far quicker than the original.

Years ago, my friend Fr. Richard John Neuhaus explained how this happens in “The Return of Eugenics.”

“Thousands of medical ethicists and bioethicists, as they are called, professionally guide the unthinkable on its passage through the debatable on its way to becoming the justifiable until it is finally established as the unexceptionable.”

Exactly. There’s always assurances—“safeguards”—which supposedly ensure that only the terminally ill will be eligible for assisted suicide. Before you know it, however, the definition of terminally ill gets expanded (or dropped) and we’re off to the races.

The waiting period gets shorter and shorter. The number of non-physicians who can “assist” in suicides gets longer and longer. We are now so far down the slippery slope that people with disabilities, or who have Alzheimer’s, or who feel they have “completed lives” (and the list in growing) receive sympathetic responses from legislatures.

But not all legislatures and not all the time.

Believe it or not, a genuinely radical assisted suicide bill just got pulled in California. “Lawmaker withdraws sweeping California bill to expand assisted dying” is the headline of a story written by Rachel Bluth for POLITICO. That lawmaker is San Diego area Sen. Catherine Blakespear.

Bluth’s lead is

SACRAMENTO, California — The author of a California bill that aimed to create the most expansive assisted dying law in the country has pulled the proposal, meaning it won’t be considered this year.

Her bill—Senate bill 1196—would have expanded California’s 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,” Bluth writes. Under current law in California “patients can only request these drugs when they have six months left to live.”

“The proposal would have allowed even people without a specific terminal prognosis to end their lives.”

And there is this very scary thought: “It also added dementia to the list of conditions that could qualify but specified that only having a mental health condition does not.” How long do you think that distinction would last?

For now, supporters and opponents of assisted suicide are criticizing Sen. Blakespear for going too far, too fast. Bluth writes

Sen. Susan Talamantes Eggman, who authored the original End of Life Options Act in 2016, came out against the most recent expansion, posting on X that, “While I have compassion for those desiring further change, pushing for too much too soon puts CA & the country at risk of losing the gains we have made for personal autonomy.”

In other words, be patient. Opposition will soften sooner or later. With that in mind, Sen. Blakespear removed her Senate bill from consideration before its first hearing.

But, rest assured, her bill will be back, watered-down ever so slightly, and we will be told it represents a “compromise.”