Assisted-suicide debate starts anew in California
By Edwin Garcia
Mercury News Sacramento Bureau
SACRAMENTO - Empowered by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, a group of legislators, senior advocates and doctors launched a reinvigorated campaign Tuesday to establish a law permitting physician-assisted suicide in California, just six months after abandoning aprevious effort that was headed for political defeat.
Proponents of the measure told a news conference they were encouraged by the high court's decision a week ago to uphold Oregon's assisted suicide law, which they believe will help sway undecided lawmakers to vote in favor of the California measure.
But Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, in making his first detailed public comments on the measure Tuesday, suggested that voters should decide the issue. A Roman Catholic, he also said he won't let religious beliefs predetermine how he would act should the bill reach his desk.
``There are certain decisions that I believe very strongly that the people should make, rather than legislators make,'' Schwarzenegger told an annual gathering of the Sacramento Press Club. ``I would never want to force my opinion on something like that on everyone in California.''
Oregon's Death With Dignity Act, which took effect in 1997, was approved twice by voters.
The California measure, introduced nearly a year ago by Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, and Patty Berg, D-Santa Rosa, cleared two committees last spring but was withdrawn by the authors in July when it became clear the majority of lawmakers would vote it down.
``This year the difference is, first and foremost, we had a 6-3 decision from the Supreme Court saying that this is legal, and the states can decide on your own,'' Levine said.
Berg said she and Levine are ``close'' to acquiring the necessary votes for passage.
AB 651, which proponents call the Compassionate Choices Act, would allow terminally ill California residents who are declared mentally competent, and who have been evaluated by two physicians, to request a lethal prescription, which they would self administer.
The proponents' news conference at the State Capitol featured a Southern California man who has AIDS and has been given six months to live, a Sacramento-area woman whose terminally ill father died a ``humiliating, demoralizing'' death, and a Methodist minister from Los Angeles who said some patients look forward to dying.
Opponents of the measure, led by health-care advocates and disability rights groups, the proposed law would be ``bad medicine for California'' because it promotes ending one's own life instead of improving care for the terminally ill and chronically ill.
``We don't want this power put in the hands of some physicians to make this absolutely incorrect judgment call,'' said Dr. H. Rex Greene, who serves on the ethics committee of the California Medical Association, which opposes physician-assisted suicide.
``I think there's an astonishing naivete about what this radical change in the role of physicians will do to the medical profession,'' Greene added.
The bill is expected to be debated in the Senate Judiciary Committee in several weeks. Mercury News staff writers Kate Folmar and Aaron C. Davis contributed to this report. Contact Edwin Garcia at egarcia@mercurynews.com or (916) 441-4651.
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