No Sanctuary for the Truly Vulnerable in California

Even as the nation is taking a decided step away from the leftward thrust of the last eight years in our politics, we Californians—who have already legalized and financed abortion on demand and last year sanctioned so-called “assisted suicide”—are turning our attention to discovering new means and new victims of this misguided and nihilistic death cult.

In the State Senate, three bills have been introduced advancing this ominous trend. Yet, even here, there is still a glimmer of civilization and hope as one constitutional amendment has been proposed to “stem” the billions in funding for embryonic stem cell “research.”

align=”left” It is a profound irony, as well as a national embarrassment, to see the state government that has threatened to follow, indeed surpass, the nearly 300 sanctuary cities for the narrow category of criminal aliens, provide no protection for the many more persons, of all ages, sexes and conditions, who want merely to breathe, or continue breathing, the breath of life.
First, Senate Bill 743 by would guarantee that Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers could still receive federal Medicaid funds via Medi-Cal “family planning services.” This is a perfect example of California Democrats’ defiance of the national conservative trend. Luxuriating in their monopoly of state executive offices and possession of two thirds of both houses in the California state legislature, they are thumbing their noses at millions of Americans in other states (and, in fact, in the many parts of California not close to the metro areas of Los Angeles or San Francisco) who have elected leaders at the state and federal level who have placed, or would place, limits—financial and otherwise—on abortion.

Exemplifying abortion advocates’ virtual sanctification of fetal homicide is SB 309, which would create a specialty license plate celebrating “reproductive freedom.” Revenue generated would go to the “California Reproductive Freedom Fund,” whatever that is.

One wonders: Did the Third Reich authorize plates for Volkswagens to celebrate the killing of members of “inferior races?”

Finally, Senator Richard Pan (D-Sacramento) proposes SB 481 which would allow nursing homes to declare patients “unfit” to make their own decisions, and then implement “medical procedures” that could include “assisted suicide.” The state already permits persons believed to be facing death in six months to end their lives, a development that was justified on the grounds that the consent of the patient would be required. This new development demonstrates just how hollow that premise was.

While unlikely to make it out of committee, Senate Constitutional Amendment 7 would repeal the (embryonic) Stem Cell Research and Cures Act approved by the state’s voters in 2004. That misguided measure was sold to the public on the failed promise that embryonic cells offered the greatest potential to help advance research curing many debilitating neurological and other diseases. But experience with adult stem cells and from placentas has proven far more fruitful.

Though not directly aimed at death, SB 18—yet another product of Pan’s office—originally sought to challenge parental authority in the name of “children’s rights” and ambitiously proclaimed that the bill “establishes standards relating to the health, safety, well-being, early childhood and educational opportunities, and familial supports necessary for all children to succeed.”

Of course, parents’ natural concern for their children’s very lives cannot be surpassed. Yet this bill would have directly threatened parents’ ability to homeschool their kids or to send them to private schools deemed out of compliance with the state’s ambiguous “standards.”

Public outcry about the potential for usurpation of parental authority caused the Senate to change the focus of the bill, at least on the surface, to establish an 18-member children and youth joint committee (half from the senate and half from the assembly). The committee would direct the legislature to maximize spending on that class of persons and, of course, use that class of persons as justification for massive tax hikes. The original alarming objectives doubtless will be implemented in bits and pieces through the new committee’s efforts but, for now, they’ve done sufficient cosmetic repair to the bill to keep this hidden from the public.

Still, the committee’s purported concern for the children is curious. Do only children who have been permitted to be born deserve this intense concern?

Meanwhile, California’s new Attorney General Xavier Becerra has slapped 15 felony charges—14 counts of illegally recording conversations without consent and one count of conspiracy—against David Daleiden, the project lead at the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), and his associate, Sandra Merritt.

In the past 20 months, the Center for Medical Progress has released a series of undercover videos featuring highly placed Planned Parenthood officials and employees of tissue procurement companies associated with the nation’s largest abortion provider. They admitted in recorded conversations various illegalities about how the companies skirted state and federal law to engage in the selling of highly-desired aborted baby tissue, organs and limbs.

“At the end of the day, the only thing that is different from the work that I did and the work that CMP did and the work that undercover journalists and investigative journalists are doing every single day here in California … is who I went after,” Daleiden told the Washington Times.

“The only difference is that I happened to go after and expose the political ally and financial backers of the establishment power structure in California and in the country. That is the only reason why I am being prosecuted with these bogus charges under California Penal Code 632 and why the local reporters with NBC Los Angeles and others places are not. That really says it all.”

It is a profound irony, as well as a national embarrassment, to see the state government that has threatened to follow, indeed surpass, the nearly 300 sanctuary cities for the narrow category of criminal aliens, provide no protection for the many more persons, of all ages, sexes and conditions, who want merely to breathe, or continue breathing, the breath of life. It is a shame that California’s political leadership is not as zealous about saving lives as they are about ending them for the elderly and the unborn. But, alas, their priorities are elsewhere. Such is the situation in our coming “sanctuary state.”

element_content=””]