The Los Angeles Times story is so over-the-top supportive that it was downright soppy.

It paints a word picture of a politician on the rack, a “former Jesuit seminary student” who was riven by a heart-wrenching moral conundrum. I could almost hear the violins playing and see the sunset … except for the raw truth of what this politician/martyr had done.

“I have considered the theological and religious perspectives that any deliberate shortening of one’s life is sinful,” he said.

Nice phrase that; “deliberate shortening of a life.” Not only did this politician ply all his political arts to evoke sympathy for himself as he did the unthinkable, he created a new euphemism for the doing of it while he was at it.

“Deliberate shortening of life” is Governor Jerry Brown’s lovely little phrase for murdering people to put them out of our misery, otherwise known as euthanasia, also known as death with dignity, also known as cold-blooded killing. Governor Jerry Brown, that “former Jesuit seminarian,” has joined the pantheon of politicians who, with a stroke of his pen, has killed untold numbers of people with a law that will allow the killing to go on for generations.

Long after Governor Brown has finally retired for the last time and ridden off into the political sunset, people will continue to die because of what he did today. If past is prelude, this law, as bad as it is, will become the opening volley in the war on life by use of euthanasia in California. As bad as it is, future politicians will line up to the death wagon and amend it to make it worse.

The law as it now stands allows medical murderers to kill their patients when the patient is certified to have six months to live and signs permission to be killed. Aside from the obvious fact that there are a lot of people in hospices all over the country who have lived longer than the six months the docs predicted, and aside from the fact that people who are sick, sad, weak can be bullied and bamboozled into signing these things; aside from all that, Governor Brown’s reasoning is still garbage.

People can be loved and helped through a long dying process. What’s more, those times at the end of life are just as valuable — often more so — as any other. I know. I am walking my elderly mother home right now. Before that, I helped take care of my father when he was dying. We can keep people comfortable at the end of their lives. What’s more, we can keep them happy.

It’s not easy. It fact, it’s really hard. It takes work, grit and commitment. Most of all, it takes love. But is it worth it? Oh my yes!

Taking care of a person in their last times is not all changing diapers and managing their meds. It’s saying their prayers with them at night and tucking them into bed. It’s putting your arms around their frail shoulders and holding them close. It’s having them tell you that they love you, a few more times. It’s knowing that absolutely you are doing the right thing, the Jesus thing, the only thing that really matters: You are caring for the least of these.

Caring for dying people, sick people, disabled people, old people, prematurely born people — caring for people — extracts a cost, yes. But anything that is worthwhile always extracts a cost. Caring for people is eternity work. The good you do; the faith, hope and love of it, goes with you into the next life. It is your real treasure, the only treasure that you do not lay down on the day that you die.

What Governor Jerry Brown did today is eternity work, as well. The deaths he caused, the blood on his hands, will not wash away with any kind of soap. He is a mass murderer now. And the harm he has done will follow him all the rest of his days and into the life after this one.

I’ve been an elected official who used the power of office to kill pro-life bills. The day when I understood the full horror of what I had done was shattering. It was an awful gift that God gave me. It was also the beginning of His incredible gift of allowing me to go back to the same place and do it all again and do it right.

During my time in office after that moment of shattering truth, I tried from time to time to reason with my colleagues about something or other they were doing that we both knew would kill people. I tried to tell them that nothing — nothing — was worth the realization that they had killed innocents, that they had blood on their hands. You don’t want to go there. I told them.

I also know how hard it is to undo harm once you’ve done it. You can’t un-kill people once you’ve killed them. Worse, you can’t stop the killing that your bad laws set in motion. It goes on. Bad laws kill now and they kill for generations to come. The power of a bad law to destroy life, brutalize society and wreak havoc on human worth is incalculable.

Soppy news stories that propagandize on his behalf aside, Governor Jerry Brown signed his name to an open-ended death warrant for untold numbers of innocent people today. How many deaths will end up in the column under his name before this law is rescinded? How many people did he kill with his pen?

I predict that, before this is over, only God will know the full answer to those questions.

Governor Jerry Brown is a human being like other human beings. He has to stand before God and give an account of his life. Not only does this action of his send himself to hell, it also sends those who practice medical murder under this license to kill that he has signed, and those who take their own lives. There is only one way out for any of them, and that is repentance and forgiveness through Jesus Christ. Do not mistake that forgiveness for the cheap grace of television preachers. Repentance is not easy when the sins are crimes against humanity. It hurts as much as the sin itself.

Governor Jerry Brown forgot the first rule: You don’t kill innocent people. You don’t help other people kill them. You don’t even help them kill themselves.

What you do is the hard work of caring for people, of walking them home.