The Press Democrat

By KERRY BENEFIELD
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Calling it a matter of civil liberty, a North Coast lawmaker said Friday that Californians deserve the right to commit suicide with help from a doctor.

Assemblywoman Patty Berg, D-Eureka, brought her campaign to legalize assisted suicide to a Santa Rosa retirement community Friday. The approximately 50 Oakmont residents gathered for a weekly community forum expressed support for Berg's bill, but quizzed her on the safeguards.

Modeled after Oregon's landmark Death With Dignity Act, AB654 would make it legal for doctors to prescribe a fatal dose of drugs to terminally ill patients. In order to qualify, patients must be deemed competent to make the decision and must be able to self-administer the lethal dose.

A terminal diagnosis can bring more than fear about pain. It can mean anxiety over loss of control and bodily function - things some people cannot bear to live with, Berg said.

Hastening death with a fatal dose of drugs should be an option in California, as it is in Oregon, she said.

"We should be able to make that decision ourselves," Berg said. "It is deeply personal and private and unique to each one of us."

Jerry Foster, a retired neurosurgeon and Oakmont resident, said he supports Berg's bill, but he has concerns the law would eventually be used to euthanize incoherent elderly people or severely disabled children.

"It really will require that whatever organization that supervises this would make sure that doesn't happen," he said. "There has to be an ethicist to see to that."

Supported by the 80,000-member California National Organization for Women and the American Civil Liberties Union, the bill has run into fierce opposition from religious and medical groups.

The 35,000-member California Medical Association opposes the bill, as does the National Right to Life Committee and the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund. Opponents staged a three-city protest in Eureka, Sacramento and Los Angeles on Wednesday when the bill was originally scheduled for a vote by the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

The vote was rescheduled for Wednesday after the committee postponed all action on bills that would cost more than $150,000 annually to implement. The committee estimated Berg's plan would cost the state $200,000 a year.

Opponents say Berg and co-author Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, are on a misguided quest to make California the second state in the nation behind Oregon to legalize physician-assisted suicide.

"She has been going around, meeting with legislators, trying to twist as many arms as possible," said Tim Rosales, spokesman for Californians Against Assisted Suicide. "This is her and Lloyd Levine's personal crusade in Sacramento."

CAAS is the coalition leading the campaign against the bill. Even if the bill passes out of the Appropriations Committee next week, opponents are close to securing enough votes to kill it on the Assembly floor, Rosales said.

But on Friday, Berg said she is confident the bill will pass the appropriations vote and remains optimistic about its chances with the full Assembly.

If lawmakers do not pass the bill, Berg said Friday that California voters probably will.

"If it doesn't happen legislatively," she said, "it may be done in the future through the initiative process."

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