Senate panel considers assisted suicide bill
STEVE LAWRENCE
Associated Press
SACRAMENTO - A year after falling short in the Assembly, Assemblywoman Patty Berg is hoping the Senate will revive a bill that would allow doctors to help terminally ill patients end their lives at a time they select.
The legislation, modeled after an Oregon law, would allow a physician to prescribe a self-administered, life-ending drug for an adult who had been found by two doctors to be mentally competent and within six months of death.
Berg said the bill would give terminally ill patients control over "when and how they die."
"It's a peace-of-mind issue...," she said. "It's an individual saying, 'I've come to the end, and I don't want to continue living in the state I'm in and going through this process.'"
After an earlier version of the bill stalled in the Assembly last year, Berg and her chief co-author, Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, D-Sherman Oaks, amended aid-in-dying provisions into another measure that already had passed the Assembly and was awaiting action in the Senate.
That legislation faces its first test on Tuesday, when it will be taken up by the Senate Judiciary Committee following a campaign for the measure that has featured terminally ill people and former Oregon Gov. Barbara Roberts.
Berg said she's "filled with confidence" about getting the bill out of the Senate and back through the Assembly, where she said she's close to lining up the minimum 41 votes needed to send it to the governor.
Since last year, she's picked up a powerful ally in Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, who endorsed the bill in February.
"Initially, he wanted time to think it through," Berg said. "When he made up his mind, he decided not only that he would support it, but that it would get off the floor."
Other supporters include groups representing senior citizens, gays, women and physicians. A Field Poll conducted in February found that 70 percent of Californians support doctors being able to prescribe life-ending drugs for the terminally ill.
There are also doctors on the other side of the debate, as well as groups representing the disabled and Catholic Church leaders.
Tim Rosales, a spokesman for a group opposing the bill, Californians Against Assisted Suicide, said the legislation would allow doctors to violate their chief goal - to preserve life.
"We have 2,000 years of history of doctors and the bright line they will not cross," he said. "(This) makes it OK for a doctor to cross that line and be actively involved in the death of a patient."
Groups representing the disabled also worry that the bill could lead to euthanasia for the chronically ill and disabled, Rosales added.
Berg said there are strong safeguards in her bill to prevent that from happening.
Physicians now can legally hasten terminally ill patients' deaths through "terminal sedation" by putting them in an unconscious state and cutting off food and water, Berg said.
"The patient does not necessarily control that," she added. "It's controlled by family members or the physician. Tell me how that's better than what we're proposing in our bill."
But Rosales said stopping treatment is the better option.
"We have no argument with stopping treatment...," he said. "You have an action of somebody stopping treatment, refusing extraordinary means (of preserving life) versus a doctor actively giving someone an overdose prescription of a drug that's intended to kill them."
Here are some of the other bills facing votes this week, a busy one as lawmakers try to clear committee calendars before a July recess:
CHILDREN-SMOKING - Assemblyman Paul Koretz, D-West Hollywood, also is trying to revive a bill, a measure that would make it an infraction to smoke in a car carrying a child young enough to require a child seat. It's before the Senate Health Committee on Wednesday.
The late Assemblyman Marco Firebaugh, a South Gate Democrat who died in March, tried to get an earlier version of the bill through the Legislature in 2004, and Koretz has named his bill the Marco Firebaugh Memorial Children's Health and Safety Act of 2006.
"It's time to say no to allowing smoking in the smallest, most enclosed place with the health of the smallest and most vulnerable at stake," Koretz said.
GREENHOUSE GASES - Nunez has a bill before the Senate Environmental Quality Committee on Monday that would require the Air Resources Board to adopt regulations designed to roll back greenhouse gas emissions from industry to 1990 levels by 2020. The gases have been linked to global warming by scientists.
CABLE TELEVISION - A heavily lobbied Nunez bill that would help telephone companies get into the cable television business is on the Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee's agenda on Tuesday. It would allow companies such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. to offer cable services by obtaining a state franchise instead of having to negotiate cable deals with local communities.
MEXICAN DEPORTATION - Sen. Joe Dunn, D-Garden Grove, is continuing his campaign to draw attention to the deportation of about 2 million Hispanics, including American citizens and legal immigrants, during the 1930s. His latest bill, before the Assembly Education Committee on Wednesday, would require junior and senior high school social science classes to teach about the deportations.
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