All posts by Center for Inquiry

News

California: Tell Gov. Brown to Sign Bill Legalizing Patient Choice at End of Life

An action alert from the Center for Inquiry’s Office of Public Policy:

The California legislature has just approved a bill that would legalize physician-assisted dying, and the Center for Inquiry (CFI) urges you to contact Gov. Jerry Brown right now and urge him to sign this measure into law. 

Senate Bill 128, the End of Life Option Act, would authorize “an adult who meets certain qualifications, and who has been determined by his or her attending physician to be suffering from a terminal illness, as defined, to make a request for medication prescribed pursuant to these provisions for the purpose of ending his or her life.” The bill would also establish procedures for making these requests.

Many people who are terminally ill want the option of meeting their death on their own terms, so that they can spare themselves and their families needless suffering. CFI firmly believes competent, terminally ill patients have a right to determine whether to prolong their life or hasten their death. Accordingly, CFI strongly supports legislation that authorizes physician-assisted dying.

However, adamant and well-financed opposition from religious institutions — especially the Catholic Church — has frustrated such efforts. We believe that at the end of a person’s life, no one else’s religious views should affect their medical care, including how or when they choose to die. Our lives don’t belong to any church, politician, or cultural tradition. Our lives are our own.

Five states have already authorized physician-assisted dying: Oregon, Washington, Montana, Vermont, and New Mexico. With your help, California could become the next.

You can take action here.

News

Legal case tests religious hospitals’ right to deny procedures

As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Rachel Miller, due to have her second child in late September, agreed with her husband that this would be her last pregnancy and decided she would be sterilized by tubal ligation after giving birth. But her hospital in Redding, owned by Dignity Health in San Francisco, refused to allow her doctor to perform the procedure, saying tubal ligation violates the ethical principles of Catholic health care facilities.

Now Miller’s case could become the springboard for a legal attack on barriers to reproductive procedures — other than abortions — at Catholic hospitals in California, whose numbers are steadily increasing.

“Hospitals that are open to the general public and that receive state money shouldn’t be able to use religion to discriminate or to deny important health care,” said Elizabeth Gill, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who represents Miller. She said the hospital receives state Medi-Cal funds as well as federal funding from both Medi-Cal and Medicare.

In an Aug. 17 letter to Mercy Medical Center in Redding, Gill said the ACLU would go to court unless the hospital reversed course and authorized the sterilization procedure. By denying “pregnancy-related care” to Miller, Gill wrote, the hospital is discriminating on the basis of sex, as defined by California law, and is also allowing “your corporate entity’s religious beliefs” to override a doctor’s medical decision, violating a state law against the corporate practice of medicine.

You can keep reading here.

News

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Gets It Wrong About African-American Boys And Autism

Earlier this month, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed that African-American boys have a “ disproportionate risk of autism.” Emily Willingham of Forbes has now issued a detailed response to this claim, in which she writes that “either he’s [Kennedy Jr.] very, very bad at reading scientific studies or he’s very, very cynical about the target audience for his latest book.” She continues:

The “shocking piece” about African-American boys and autism turns out to be shocking only in the surprising fragility of the evidence that Kennedy expects to support that claim and how easily dismantled it is. He attempts to lay out an argument that African-American boys (if ethnicity is a factor, then why not girls, too?) are more susceptible to autism and that something in vaccines must be responsible. Yet a look at each source he cites to support his thesis reveals no support for it at all.

You can read the full article, with detailed science-based responses to Kennedy Jr’s claims, here.

News

A Death from Measles

Michael Specter reports in The New Yorker that the Washington State Department of Health has announced the first confirmed measles death in the United States in more than a decade, and explains that the “herd immunity” gained by vaccinations is lost when the vaccination rate falls below ninety person — as is the case in Washington state.

One of the central purposes of universal vaccination is to provide “herd immunity” to the most vulnerable segments of the population—infants, for example, and those receiving drug treatment for cancer and other diseases that compromise the immune system. If you are sick and unable to get vaccinated, the herd around you, in theory, should provide protection. Once the vaccine rate falls much below ninety per cent, however, herd immunity disappears. Vaccine rates are particularly low in northwestern Washington, where the measles death occurred, as they are in many other parts of the state.*

Keep reading here.

News

AMA: End Personal, Religious Vaccination Exemptions

Bruce Japsen of Forbes reports on a significant development at the American Medical Association:

The American Medical Association endorsed an end to non-medical exemptions for immunization, saying the nation’s largest doctor group would throw its considerable lobbying clout behind state and national efforts to halt personal and religious exemptions from vaccinations for children entering schools.

The vote today by the AMA’s policy-making House of Delegates to seek more stringent state and federal immunization requirements comes at a critical time opponents of vaccination exemptions are successfully lobbying lawmakers in California and elsewhere for legislation to end non-medical exemptions from vaccination. Last December, a highly publicized outbreak of measles at Disneyland sickened more than 130 Californians.

You can read the full report here.

News

California: Tell Your State Senator to Support Patient Choice at the End of Life

Today the Center for Inquiry’s Office of Public Policy launched an urgent advocacy alert regarding a piece of legislation under consideration in the California Senate:

Time is running out! The California Senate has until June 5 to approve a bill that would legalize physician-assisted dying, or else the bill will automatically lapse — and the Center for Inquiry (CFI) needs your help to get it passed before the deadline.

SB 128, the End of Life Option Act, would authorize “an adult who meets certain qualifications, and who has been determined by his or her attending physician to be suffering from a terminal illness, as defined, to make a request for medication prescribed pursuant to these provisions for the purpose of ending his or her life.” The bill would also establish procedures for making these requests.

You can read more and take action here.

 

News

It’s Time to Eliminate Religious Exemptions From Medical Care

Inspired by the California Senate’s recent efforts to repeal the state’s exemption from vaccine requirements, Jerry Coyne argues on Slate that lawmakers across the United States should repeal religious exemptions from medical care:

As preventable diseases like measles and whooping cough are reappearing in the United States, many anti-vaxxers are re-evaluating their opposition to immunization, and others are questioning nonmedical exemptions from vaccine requirements. The California state Senate, for instance, just overruled a long-standing law that permitted parents with religious and philosophical reservations to send their children to public and private schools without their shots.

This is a sound decision: Vaccinations are safe and essential for the health of our society. We cannot allow philosophy or faith to trump public health. But denying children potentially life-saving vaccines is just one part of the problem; I’d like to eliminate even more exemptions: those now enshrined in many laws permitting religious parents to withhold scientific medical care from their children in favor of faith healing.

Keep reading here.

News

Urgent! California: Tell Your State Senator to End “Personal Belief” Vaccine Exemptions

From the Center for Inquiry’s Office of Public Policy:

California Senate Bill 277 — a bill that would end vaccination exemptions for children based on their parents’ beliefs — passed all 3 of its Senate committee votes. It now sits before the Senate awaiting a full and final vote, as early as this week! The Center for Inquiry urges you to support SB 277 and take action below to contact your state senator now!

Take action here.