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By Clea Benson -- Bee Capitol Bureau
Published 2:15 am PST Wednesday, March 15, 2006
A majority of Californians favor a bill that would allow terminally ill patients to end their own lives with a lethal prescription, a new Field Poll has found.
The survey found that 57 percent of California adults support the proposed law, Assembly Bill 651. The measure, written by Assembly members Patty Berg, D-Eureka, and Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, would allow doctors to prescribe lethal medication to patients who have been declared mentally competent and terminally ill by two physicians.
The authors of the bill are hoping it will garner enough support to pass in the wake of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that cleared the way for states to legalize assisted suicide. The measure failed to gain enough support to pass last year, in part because the Supreme Court decision was pending.
The poll found support for the general idea of allowing people to terminate their own lives was even higher, at 70 percent of adults. Californians have consistently expressed strong support for assisted suicide in polls since at least 1979, said Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo.
"It's a personal kind of decision," DiCamillo said. "People generally have come to their views, and we haven't seen much attitude shift in all the years we've measured it."
DiCamillo said Californians were more likely to favor the general concept than a specific bill because they might have concerns about whether the legislation had enough safeguards to prevent terminally ill people from ending their lives because of depression or outside pressure. "I think there might be some caution about the potential for abuse, that people would have too much latitude in ending their own lives," DiCamillo said.
The Field Poll, taken in February, also showed that the percentage of people who said they would want a doctor to help them die if they were terminally ill themselves dropped to 62 percent, from 68 percent last year.
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