Authors say votes are lacking, vow to push for the measure next year.
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
By Jim Sanders -- Bee Capitol Bureau
Legislation to make California the second state to allow doctor-assisted suicide has been shelved for this year.
Assembly Democrats Lloyd Levine and Patty Berg, who proposed the measure, said they lacked the votes necessary to pass it.
The proposal would allow mentally competent patients who are not expected to live for more than six months to obtain a prescription for life-ending medication.
"It's a very personal issue," said Levine, of Van Nuys. "We just believe we need more time to educate the members."
Levine and Berg, of Eureka, vowed to renew their push in January.
"We're certainly not giving up," Berg said.
"I really believe, with all my heart, that once people sit down and think it through, calmly and rationally, they'll come to the conclusion that people have the right to make up their own mind (about life-ending medication)," she said.
Doctor-assisted suicide initially was proposed as Assembly Bill 654, which stalled and failed to meet a June 3 deadline for the Assembly to vote on bills generated by its members.
Levine and Berg then took a different tack, taking the issue directly to the Senate by gutting and amending an existing bill, AB 651, that already had been sent to the upper house.
When they found they couldn't count on a majority of votes in the Senate, either, Berg and Levine halted their effort this year rather than force a floor vote that they might lose.
"I thought it might be less political in the Senate than it was in the Assembly, but truth be known, it's political in both houses," Berg said.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has taken no position on the measure, which is patterned after an Oregon law that took effect in 1997.
Political consultant Wayne Johnson of Californians Against Assisted Suicide, a coalition of groups opposing the proposal, said he is not surprised that lawmakers would reject the notion of "physicians actually participating in killing patients."
"It's not the duty or the responsibility of people in the medical profession to take life - their job is to save lives," Johnson said.
Opponents include the California Catholic Conference, the Scholl Institute of Bio Ethics, the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, and the Alliance of Catholic Healthcare.
The bill is sponsored by an advocacy group, Compassion and Choices. Supporters include the American Civil Liberties Union and the California chapter of the National Organization for Women.
The proposal contains numerous requirements designed to prevent a terminally ill patient from seeking life-ending medication frivolously, impulsively or under duress.
The measure requires that two doctors agree on a patient's prognosis. It also requires a 15-day waiting period and mandates that patients receive counseling if they suffer from depression or other psychological disorders.
Patients would have to administer the life-ending medication to themselves.
Levine said he is buoyed by a Field Poll, released in March, which found that 70 percent of Californians support doctor-assisted suicide.
Public support for the concept could push the Legislature to approve it in 2006, even though it's an election year, Levine said.
"I think this is an issue where the public is exerting leadership and eventually the politicians will follow," he said.
Polls since 1979 have shown consistent support for doctor-assisted suicide, but voters rejected such a measure, Proposition 161, 54 percent to 46 percent in 1992.
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