(KCBS) - Supporters of California's Compassionate Choices Act, which would legalize assisted suicide in the Golden State, have kicked off a campaign drive to get it enacted.
Jim Taylor in the KCBS Santa Clara County Bureau says the controversy is great surrounding the question of whether or not the terminally ill should be allowed to decide how and when their life should end.
Barbara Roberts is the former Governor of Oregon, the only state in the nation with a law like AB 654. She is helping Campaign in California.
Assisted suicide, right to die - "All of these things are just titles for the same thing, that gives people at the end of their life who are terminally ill the option to make a choice other than just awaiting a long, lingering death process."
Roberts dismisses the notion that passage of AB 654 would result in a 'death-rush' of people coming to California to die.
"That's exactly the prediction we had in Oregon when this was under consideration, that all these people would move to Oregon and want to die there," she said. "They might want to live there, but they've never moved there to die. That never happened."
The Catholic Church is one of the most vocal opponents of AB 654, calling it immoral and wrong.
"I really understand that it is not everyone's choice," Roberts said. "But for those who choose to die in this way, who don't want to go through the deterioration and debilitation and even the pain, and they want to have an option, that option ought to be there for them."
Joe Ramos from Half Moon Bay watched his wife waste away while suffering from ALS. She died a slow, painful death.
"The last week of her life was extremely difficult, extremely painful for her and the family just watching the suffering she went through," said Ramos. "I believe this is a way to be able to end one's life with dignity without having to go through what my wife went through."
Ramos said his wife chose to starve herself to death, because she wanted to end her life and had no other legal option.
Seven years after Oregon enacted its law, a total of 208 terminally ill people have chosen to end their lives there.
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