'Death with Dignity' dies
One vote proves enough to kill bill
The Times-Standard
Eureka Times Standard
SACRAMENTO -- The long fight to pass a bill that would allow assisted suicide in California ended Tuesday when one Democratic senator pulled the plug.
The state Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday rejected AB 651, the California Compassionate Choices Act, by Assemblywoman Patty Berg, D-Eureka, and Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys. The proposed legislation was modeled after Oregon's “Death with Dignity” law.
The bill's fate came down to the committee chairman, Sen. Joe Dunn, D-Santa Ana. Dunn voted against the bill, saying he could not trust that future Legislatures would refrain from expanding the bill to allow non-terminal patients to hasten their deaths.
”It's a crushing disappointment,” said Berg. “To have this bill fail because one senator has no faith in the legislators who will come after us is truly devastating.”
Losing this long battle, which started last year and landed Berg in the national spotlight, was difficult to swallow, she said.
”Terminally ill patients in California deserve better than this,” she said. “They deserve choice. And I'm just heartbroken that I was unable to give it to them.”
# # #