111 DEAD - Death toll mounts under California suicide law, will the children and elderly be next?

Suicide laws always expand to include more people.

During the first six months that California has allowed doctors to violate their Hippocratic oath by poisoning patients, 111 people have committed suicide. California's assisted suicide law makes the state the fifth in the nation to permit doctors to give their patients lethal drugs.

LOS ANGELES, CA (California Network) -- One hundred eleven. That's the number of people who have committed suicide, ending their life in unnatural fashion using medical prescription over the last six months. The state passed a law that allows physicians to fulfill patient requests to be given lethal narcotics if they are ruled to be terminally ill.

According to statistics, the majority of people taking their own lives were white, college-educated persons over the age of 60. All were required to be diagnosed with terminal illnesses before they could lawfully be given the prescription.

The law is called the "End of Life Option Act." Under the Act, 191 patients have requested the poison, and 111 have already consumed them and died as a result.

There are many problems with euthanasia. Proponents capitalize on confusion, pain, and fear to promote their goal, which is to permit people to commit suicide lawfully, and to make suicide socially acceptable. Once normalized, like other forms of social deviance, the practice is certain to spread. In time, it will not be merely the terminally ill, but rather people who are depressed, or labeled undesirable. The elderly, who have little left to contribute to society would be among the first ordinary victims of such changing attitudes.

In this way, our doctors become killers as much as healers. We learn to dispose instead of fix. We place things like money and ease above life itself.

This is the path to a disordered society. It is diabolical. It is so evil that not even the pagan Romans flirted with the concept. The normalization of suicide causes human life, which can be created only by a miracle of God, to be in competition with worldly decadence. Life is assigned a quantifiable value and can be outweighed by material things.

Worst of all, the fate could befall any number of us. What happens when your life, which is a real and genuine miracle, is placed in the balance pan and found wanting against something artificial? What defense will you offer as you are ordered to drink from the poison cup?

Euthanasia, once properly outlawed is becoming vogue as states pass laws allowing its use. We have seen in cases such as the Netherlands and Belgium that the practice eventually spreads. In those countries, children and people who are physically healthy are now allowed to commit suicide. Parents are killing children because their children have mental or physical handicaps.

Suffering is a terrible thing, but it has a role within the faith. Through suffering, we meet Christ. We can grow closer to God in our final days. Pain is a temporal condition. But love for life, love for God, love for what is right transcends everything.