By DEXTER DUGGAN
California’s legal stance on life is a dramatic warning of where the Democrat Party’s Culture of Death heads once it becomes dominant, as it is at the state legislature in Sacramento.
Left-wing Democrat Gov. Jerry Brown recently signed into law the further expansion of permissive abortion and arrival of “assisted suicide.”
The elderly Brown’s haggard appearance sometimes suggests Dr. Death himself.
Some people, including within California’s institutional Catholic Church structure, hoped that Brown’s background as a former Jesuit seminarian would lead to a different result. However, a California pro-life activist told The Wanderer the hope wasn’t realistic.
“I don’t care if (Brown) studied at the feet of all the apostles,” said Brian Johnston, chairman of the California ProLife Council, who pointed out that Brown last year signed other bills making abortion more permissive. One 2014 measure said abortionists don’t even have to be physicians.
“There are no (abortion) clinic regulations anymore,” Johnston said during an October 13 interview.
This year the state legislature’s Democrat majority even passed a bill requiring that pro-life clinics must advise clients of how to get abortions — even though abortuaries aren’t required to give their customers pro-life contact information.
Attorneys quickly filed challenges to the attack on pro-life clinics’ free speech.
In a statement, the Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom said: “Pregnancy centers, which offer real help and hope to women, shouldn’t be punished by political allies of the abortion industry. Forcing pro-life centers to promote abortion and recite the government’s messages is a clear violation of their constitutionally protected First Amendment freedoms. Courts around the country have already rightly struck down these types of laws.”
Brad Dacus, president of the pro-life Pacific Justice Institute, said: “Forcing a religious pro-life charity to proclaim a pro-abortion declaration is on its face an egregious violation of both the free speech and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment to the Constitution. We will not rest until this government mandate is completely halted.”
Also, the California Democrats removed the requirement that abortionists have hospital-admitting privileges, a Sacramento pro-life activist said.
On the general topic of qualifying for admitting privileges, a LifeNews.com article in October 2013 said they “should not be a problem for a good physician to come by. The criteria hospitals examine when deciding whether or not to grant admitting privileges to a local physician tend to be board certifications, malpractice history and reported complications, level of experience and expertise, and validation of educational credentials.”
“The evil is palpable, and it’s demonstrable,” the ProLife Council’s Johnston told The Wanderer. He expressed frustration that some pro-lifers think standing in front of abortion clinics is the starting point. The priority, he said, must be to cut off government funding.
The powerful speaker of California’s lower house, the State Assembly, San Diego Democrat Toni Atkins, was an abortion-clinic owner before she went into politics, Johnston said.
“These ideologues of death have gone into public policy, and they’re living off the state” funding abortion, Johnston said. Without all its tax money, the abortion industry “would wither,” he said.
Shortly after Brown signed a bill making “assisted suicide” legal in the Golden State (see story in The Wanderer, October 15 issue, p. 2), the governor vetoed a bill allowing access to potentially life-saving experimental medications for the terminally ill that even many Democrats backed.
Does Brown hope to start another trend to bring his party ever-further to the pro-death left?
“The so-called ‘Right to Try’ legislation…sailed through the California legislature with nearly unanimous support,” the Sacramento Bee said.
The Washington Free Beacon website reported on October 12 that some version of Right to Try has been adopted in 24 states. The Free Beacon said the measure had been developed by the Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute. It quoted Kurt Altman, the institute’s director of national affairs and special counsel:
“Gov. Brown has deprived Californians of the right to try to save their lives when their mortality hangs in the balance. We hope that the legislature will work together in a bipartisan effort to override Gov. Brown’s veto.”
In a statement to The Wanderer, veteran pro-life activist Jim Holman noted that California is acting contrary to abortion-law trends in other states, where restrictions are being enacted. Holman is publisher of the alternative weekly San Diego Reader and the online California Catholic Daily.
Holman said in an October 13 email: “California already provides one out of four abortions in the U.S. In 2014 Gov. Brown and the legislature upped abortion subsidies 40 percent, removed all regulations for abortion clinics, and gave non-physicians (nurses, midwives, physician assistants) permission to perform all abortions.
“Now come the 2015 pro-abortion laws,” he said. “As other states make abortion on demand harder, will California soon be the home of one-third or one-half of the country’s abortions?
“The one silver lining is that parental notification for minors’ abortions still polls 68 percent in favor, and pro-family forces are now collecting signatures for a parental-notification initiative for the November 2016 ballot,” Holman said.
“The loosening of immigration laws may be the undoing of the left,” he added. “Hispanics poll 81 percent in favor of parental notification, Asians 70 percent. These two groups will be a much larger part of the California voting public in 2016.”
Reymundo Torres, president of the Arizona Latino Republican Association, told The Wanderer in an October 12 interview that for Catholic elected public officials “to give in to this (pro-death platform) is a demonstration of the absolute lack of relevance” the Church has to them.
Many Latino Democrat politicians profess a Catholic identity, but their behavior shows otherwise.
“I don’t see (the Church) actively engaged in a way to make any headway,” Torres said. “…I see no frequent and forthright and pro-active measures being engaged in by the Church…that would definitively assist” advancing these goals.
If a bill is signed into law, Torres said, “It’s almost too late” if the losing side has to hope a court overturns the legislation, where the outcome “teeters on the whim of a judge.”
Torres, a conservative Republican, has announced his candidacy next year to represent the Eighth Legislative District in the Arizona House.
Vote Fraud
Another bill that Brown signed raised questions about potential massive vote fraud. It automatically will register people to vote when they obtain a California driver license, unless a person chooses not to register. This could add perhaps six million names to voter rolls.
Illegal aliens in California are allowed to obtain state driver’s licenses, much to the delight of Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez.
The CalWatchdog.com website quoted some critics of the law, noting that commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano said on Fox News: “So if you are an illegal alien in California, get a driver’s license, register to vote, you can vote in local, state, and federal elections in California and those votes count.”
On the other hand, the website added, the American Civil Liberties Union opposed the bill because if an illegal immigrant was discovered to have voted illegally, that would put at risk his ability to stay in the United States.
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