California Governor Signs Bill Legalizing Physician-Assisted Dying

We have some breaking news to share from Patrick McGreevy of the Los Angeles Times:

Caught between conflicting moral arguments, Gov. Jerry Brown, a former Jesuit seminary student, on Monday signed a measure allowing physicians to prescribe lethal doses of drugs to terminally ill patients who want to hasten their deaths.

Approving the bill, whose opponents included the Catholic Church, appeared to be a gut-wrenching decision for the 77-year-old governor, who as a young man studied to enter the priesthood.

In considering it, Brown said he had to “reflect on what I would want in the face of my own death.”

California becomes the fifth state to allow so-called assisted suicide, following Oregon, Washington, Montana and Vermont.

You can read Gov. Brown’s signing statement here.