Steve Geissinger - SACRAMENTO BUREAU
SACRAMENTO -- The highly emotional and divisive debate over doctor-assisted suicide is about to spread from Oregon to California, just as its No. 1 foe in the Bush administration may be on the way out, California legislators said in interviews Monday. Assemblywoman Patty Berg, D-Santa Rosa, and Assembly man Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, are drafting a bill based on Oregon's voter-approved law for introduction next month in the California Legislature.
It would make California the second state in the nation to legalize physician-assisted death.
Berg, chairwoman of the Assembly committee on aging, and Levine, a panel member, plan to launch a campaign jointly with the Portland-based Compassion in Dying group to blunt the kind of opposition voiced Monday by religious and physician groups.
The lawmakers expect to get the majority-vote bill through the Democrat-dominated Legislature and figure Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a social moderate, will seriously consider it. Schwarzenegger aides declined to comment.
"We wouldn't be doing it if we didn't think we could get it passed," said Stuart Waldman, chief of staff for Levine, who was traveling overseas and could not be reached. "There's a lot of concern that terminally ill people are suffering needlessly."
The legislators also believe the potential departure of U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, who has been legally battling Oregon's one-of-a-kind law, would remove another hurdle to physician-assisted suicide -- an issue the U.S. Supreme Court has left to states.
"We're working closely with Oregon, and we've had a couple other states interested in work ing with us as well, because as California goes, so does the rest of the nation," Berg said.
Oregon's Death With Dignity Act, passed in 1997, allows a doctor to prescribe life-ending drugs to a terminally ill patient who has been diagnosed as hav-
ing no more than six months to live if the patient is a mentally competent adult who renews the request within 15 days.
Supporters of importing Oregon's law to California said polls show public opinion has shifted heavily in their favor since the 1999 failure of a bill by former Democratic Assemblywoman Dion Aroner of Berkeley and voter rejection of a 1992 California ballot initiative.
But opponents of the idea, such as the Catholic Church and the California Medical Association, said there has been no change in public attitude.
"Catholic Church teaching respects life from conception through natural death," said Tod Tamberg, a spokesman for Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony, a former Northern California bishop. "While we recognize that extraordinary means are not necessary to preserve life, the taking of life under other circumstances is rejected by our faith."
Tamberg said Mahony would not comment directly on this particular proposal unless it is considered at some point by the full California Catholic Conference.
California Medical Association spokesman Ron Lopp said his group has yet to take a position on the planned bill but opposes assisted suicide in gen eral.
The CMA, however, has argued in federal court that the U.S. attorney general's attempts to stop doctor-assisted death in Oregon could discourage physicians elsewhere from giving terminally ill patients enough pain medication.
The result of Ashcroft's efforts, the group argued, would be needlessly painful deaths for many patients.
The legal battle began after Ashcroft announced that physicians who prescribed lethal medication would lose their federal licenses to dispense controlled substances. In a lawsuit filed by the state of Oregon, federal courts ruled that Ashcroft overstepped his bounds because medical practice is regulated by the states.
The decisions have been applauded by the Oregon-based advocacy group Compassion in Dying.
"We think the people of California should have the same choices that those in Oregon do," said Carole van Aelstyn, a spokeswoman for the California affiliate of the group in San Francisco. "But I'm sure this (legislative proposal) will kick up a storm."
Meanwhile, the primary fig ure of the 1990s movement to gain legalization of doctor-assisted suicide, Jack Kevorkian, 76, remains in a Michigan pris on serving a sentence of up to 25 years. The doctor, who says he assisted in the suicide of more than 130 people, was found guilty of second-degree murder.
Contact Sacramento Bureau Chief Steve Geissinger at sgeissinger@angnewspapers.com .
(c) 2004 The Oakland Tribune. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of Media NewsGroup, Inc. by NewsBank, Inc.
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