The Press Democrat

By KERRY BENEFIELD
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

SACRAMENTO - Four years ago, Assemblyman Lloyd Levine watched his grandmother die of lung cancer.

On Tuesday, he told fellow lawmakers that her struggle inspired him to write legislation that would allow those suffering from terminal illnesses to ask for and receive a lethal dose of medication.

"At the end of her life, she was suffering greatly," the Van Nuys Democrat said. "There has got to be a better way."

After more than two hours of sometimes emotional debate, a key committee of state lawmakers agreed.

On a vote of 5-3, the Assembly Judiciary Committee passed AB654, co-authored by Levine and Assemblywoman Patty Berg, D-Eureka, who represents the North Coast, including Santa Rosa.

Among those voting for the bill was Assemblywoman Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa.

If passed by the Legislature and signed into law, the bill would allow people with less than six months to live to receive a doctor's prescription for a fatal dose of drugs. It is closely modeled after Oregon's landmark Death with Dignity Act.

The bill must clear one more committee before being sent to the full Assembly. If approved there, it will move to the state Senate.

Oppents of the bill, who Tuesday crowded the hearing room wearing "Californians Against Assisted Suicide" stickers, vowed to fight on.

"Physician-assisted suicide is the wrong answer to the right question," testified Robert Miller, a Sacramento-based oncologist who pushed for better end-of-life care. "Legalizing suicide strikes to the heart of what we do as physicians. It is the ultimate patient abandonment."

The California Medical Association and the California Hospital Association oppose the measure, but it is supported by the American Civil Liberties Union and advocacy groups focusing on independence in end-of-life decisions.

Former Oregon Gov. Barbara Roberts testified that the law passed on her watch provides those suffering from terminal illness "the pain-free, gentle exits that they seek."

But opponents contended that if passed, the law eventually will be expanded to include the mentally ill, disabled and poor.

"They are making a whole category of people that we can just lump together and dispose of," said Camille Giglio, president of the California Right to Life Committee, a Walnut Creek-based advocacy group.

Anthony Morena, a Rohnert Park mortgage broker and father of three children, testified he might not be alive today had a law similar to the one proposed been in place 35 years ago when he fell into a coma after a bicycle accident as a child.

A priest was sent to deliver last rites and doctors told his family he might spend his days in a vegetative state, he said.

He acknowledged the Berg-Levine bill would not have applied to his case, but he worried that lawmakers were overstepping their bounds.

"I'm just saying that had the law passed then, it might have been expanded to the point where I might not be here today," he said. "I don't think people should take the place of God."

But Alan Toy, a project director at UCLA's School of Public Policy and Social Research, accused disabled advocacy groups of hijacking the issue. Toy, who uses a wheelchair, said the bill is about dignity.

"This bill isn't about disability rights, it's about individual choice," he said.

Seventy percent of Californians support the idea that incurably ill patients should have the right to life-ending medicine, according to a Field Poll in February. A similar poll has been conducted six times since 1979, each time showing public support for the idea ranging from 64 percent to 75 percent.

"The vast majority of Californians understand this privacy right and want us to protect it for them," Berg said, adding that the legislation "does not set this out as an absolute right to be exercised without regulation."

Some committee members said watching relatives die played a role in their decisions on the bill.

Evans said she went through "an enormous amount of soul searching" and reading pro and con arguments before deciding to vote for the bill.

The issue is about personal choice, not politics, Evans said.

"It's up to the individual in consultation with their own spiritual adviser, family and doctor," she said.

Marilyn Golden, a policy analyst for the Berkeley-based Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, said polls that show support for assisted suicide are misleading.

"Polls always show public support before the public is well educated," she said.

Despite consistently high poll numbers, previous attempts to legalize assisted suicide have failed. A bill was introduced in the Assembly in 1999, but after passing out of two committees, it failed to garner enough support to move out of the lower house. In 1992, voters defeated an initiative that would have allowed doctors to hasten the death of terminally ill patients.

Before someone would qualify under the Berg-Levine proposal, two physicians would have to agree that the patient has less than six months to live, the patient would have to be deemed competent and not suffering from a mental illness and there would be a 17-day waiting period.

Assemblyman Ray Haynes, R-Murrieta, railed against the bill's safeguards Tuesday, arguing doctors in Oregon rarely are with patients when they self-administer the lethal dose. He said that when doctors are present, there are no safeguards to prevent them from coercing patients into ending their lives.

"The problem of safeguards is proof in court and the only persons who had intimate knowledge of whether the safeguards were followed are now dead," he said.