Mercury News

By Kate Folmar
Mercury News Sacramento Bureau

SACRAMENTO - After two hours of sometimes wrenching, intimate testimony, a legislative committee Tuesday took an initial step toward making California the second state in the nation where doctors could prescribe medication to hasten the deaths of terminally ill adults.

Wheelchairs filled the aisles of a Capitol hearing room, where all 120 seats were taken. Dozens of people lined the walls as the Assembly Judiciary Committee voted 5-4 to endorse AB 654. The bill -- which now goes to the Appropriations Committee -- would permit physician-assisted suicide for mentally competent adults with less than six months to live.

The historic bill, which has forced lawmakers to publicly reckon with their spiritual and ethical beliefs about death and dying, will be the subject of intense lobbying on both sides as it approaches the Assembly floor, possibly by May, and then moves to the Senate. The measure would require Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's signature to become law. He has not taken a stance on the bill yet.

Currently, Oregon is the only state that allows physician-assisted death, approved by voters first in 1994 and again in 1997. The Bush administration has challenged Oregon's law before the U.S. Supreme Court, which will hear arguments this fall.

Protecting privacy

The bill's sponsors, Democratic Assembly members Patty Berg and Lloyd Levine, frame the measure as protective of individual privacy, autonomy and dignity. Berg, of Santa Rosa, and Levine, of Van Nuys, accepted several amendments to assuage lawmakers' concerns that people could be coerced into committing suicide, or that the bill would eventually lead to involuntary euthanasia.

The bill ``is about the freedom of the individual to make choices -- the freedom for your choices to be different from my choices,'' said Berg.

Dozens of doctors, nurses, disabled activists, lawyers, religious leaders and others addressed the committee with tales of loved ones who suffered needlessly and of people who recovered after terminal diagnoses to lead full lives.

Opponents invoked missteps in Oregon, Nazi Germany and the recent death of Florida resident Terri Schiavo.

Disability groups and the California Medical Association oppose the bill, although some individual members dissented. Opponents vowed to step up future lobbying to defeat it.

A doctor's responsibility is ``to at all times act in the best interests of the patient,'' said Dr. Michael J. Sexton, CMA's president. ``AB 654 puts physicians in a position where they're not acting in the patient's best interests.''

Supporters told of dying loved ones who endured unimaginable pain and begged for help.

ACLU, NOW back bill

The American Civil Liberties Union and the National Organization for Women favor the bill. So does former Oregon Gov. Barbara Roberts, who supported her state's Death With Dignity Act during her term.

Jack Gildar, a 71-year-old Vacaville resident, spoke of caring for his domestic partner of 12 years, who died of melanoma in 1977. They had made a pact not to let each other suffer. Gildar, a retired Air Force major, was at a San Francisco hospital day and night as his love received morphine shots every four hours. When a 3 a.m. shot was not administered, the woman croaked out her last words: ``Pain tablet immediately.''

Panicked and powerless, Gildar briefly considered throwing her, and himself, from the hospital window. Instead, he called her doctor. Soon someone arrived with a large syringe -- Gildar calls him the ``angel of mercy'' -- and the woman died peacefully. Because Gildar isn't certain if that final shot was fatal, he did not want to name his late partner or the hospital.

Leading full lives

Marilyn Golden, policy analyst for the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund, expressed her fervent opposition to the bill. Among her concerns: People with disabilities are frequently misdiagnosed as terminal, yet go on to lead full lives; and many people suffer suicidal thoughts when they first become disabled, but later recover.

Golden told of her friend, Richard Radtke, a retired marine biologist in Hawaii with a debilitating form of multiple sclerosis. He suffered a two-year depression and would have taken his life had assisted suicide been available, Golden told the committee. But he has gone on to marry and raise a family. He now runs a charitable foundation, the Sea of Dreams Foundation, that teaches the poor and disabled about science and technology.

``Anyone mistakenly diagnosed as terminal will be vulnerable'' to coercion or worse, she said.

GOP opposition

Ultimately, five Democrats voted in favor of the bill. The committee's three Republicans voted no, as did Democrat Cindy Montañez of Mission Hills, who appeared anguished. She said she agreed with the goal of easing patients' suffering, but had to vote no because she could not allow the government to ``be a party to assisted suicide.''

According to a Field Poll last month, 70 percent of Californians favor allowing physician-assisted suicide and 68 percent would want the option available to them if they had less than six months to live.

AB 654 is modeled on Oregon's law. It would be open to mentally competent California adults diagnosed with less than six months to live. To receive fatal drugs, they would have to orally ask their doctor twice, more than two weeks apart. They would also have to make the request in writing. And two doctors would have to confirm the patient's prognosis and mental competency. Doctors with moral or other qualms would not be required to write such prescriptions.

To read the most recent health department report about Oregon's Death With Dignity Act, go to http://egov.oregon.gov/DHS/ph/pas/docs/year7.pdf.

Contact Kate Folmar at kfolmar@mercurynews.com or (916) 441-4602.