Oakland Tribune

By Steve Geissinger, SACRAMENTO BUREAU
Inside Bay Area

SACRAMENTO — Facing a potentially narrow defeat in the Assembly, Bay Area and Los Angeles lawmakers used an 11th-hour political maneuver late Wednesday to catapult their landmark doctor-assisted suicide bill into the Senate.

The move, called a "gut and amend," which transfers the legislation into a Senate bill, bypassed a Friday deadline for passage out of the house of origin and keeps the measure alive.

The proposal has triggered widespread, emotional debate, with major forces lining up on either side.

In committee hearings and behind the scenes, the clash has grown for months to the point where numerous Assembly members said they were so torn between personal, intellectual and philosophical considerations that they were uncertain how they would vote until the moment came.

"Continued debate in the Senate gives legislators the time they need to sift through the lies and scare tactics and get to the truth," said Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys. "The truth is simple. The Compassionate Choices Act gives dying Californians control over the end of their lives. Nothing more, nothing less."

AB 654 is modeled after the Oregon Death With Dignity Act, which gives terminally ill adults of sound mind who have less than six months to live the right to ask for and get medication that allows them to control their own deaths.

Levine and co-author Assemblywoman Patty Berg, D-Eureka, said the bill incorporates many safeguards — more even than the voter-approved Oregon law, which they said has proved itself for more than seven years.

But powerful opponents of the proposal — which include the Catholic Church and the California Medical Association — said the bill is fatally flawed and applauded the development as a sign that they are winning the battle to kill the measure.

Democratic Assemblymen Gene Mullin of South San Francisco and Alberto Torrico of Newark said they would have opposed the measure. Mullin cited better pain management these days, and Torrico said death is a matter for God.

But the bills' authors point to overwhelming support for the proposal in public polls.

"Californians want this choice, and we think they should have it," Berg said.

The bill, which is supported by 70 percent of California voters, according to a recent Field Poll, has been approved by the Assembly Judiciary Committee and the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

In the Senate, where the bill has attracted several co-authors, the measure is expected to be considered by the Senate Judiciary and Senate Appropriations committees.

If approved by those panels and by the full Senate, it would come back to the Assembly for a full floor vote.

"I know that many Californians deeply want compassionate choices at the end of their life," said Sen. Sheila Kuehl, who is carrying the bill in the Senate.

"And I want to work to help ensure this important privacy right."

Contact Sacramento Bureau Chief Steve Geissinger at sgeissinger@angnewspapers.com.