SACRAMENTO - Steve Mason, poet laureate of the Vietnam Veterans of America, offered his experience as a cancer patient Friday during a four-hour hearing at the state Capitol as lawmakers discussed a bill that would allow terminally ill Californians to end their own lives.

Mason, 64, is an Oregon resident suffering from terminal lung cancer who has begun the process of using that state's Death With Dignity Act.

A panel of state lawmakers heard testimony from Mason, as well as from experts and advocates on both sides of the issue.

"I decided I wanted to live as long as I could, as best as I was able," he said, "and that I would die with the dignity with which I have lived.

Calling it "a civil rights issue," Mason said, "You can't know how liberating it is to know ... that I have this choice."

Members of the Aging and Long-Term Care Committee joined with Judiciary Committee members to gather information on a proposed bill that would give terminally ill Californians the right to end their own lives.

If the bill by Assembly members Patty Berg, D-Eureka, and Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, becomes law, California would become the second state in the nation that gives terminally ill patients control over their own deaths. Oregon has been the only state to offer such rights since enacting the landmark Death With Dignity Act in 1997.

"I became a public servant to defend the rights of all people to live with dignity," Levine said, "and I believe that means giving them a choice about how they die."

The bill is expected to be closely modeled on the Oregon act, which has a long list of safeguards. Among them:

• Two physicians must agree the patient has less than six months to live.
• The patient must make three requests - two verbal, and one written.
• The patient is counseled about other alternatives.
• The patient must be shown to be mentally competent by clinical evaluation.
• There is a 15-day waiting period before a prescription is written.
• The patient must self-administer the life-ending prescription.

"There have to be alternatives to the way some people spend their final days," said Berg, who serves as the chairwoman of the Committee on Aging and Long-Term Care. "Right now, many patients go without food or water for weeks to hasten their deaths. I think there needs to be an alternative to that."

Lawmakers heard from a range of experts and opinion leaders, including Ben Rich, Ph.D., an ethicist from the University of California, Davis, Medical School; Gary Passmore, executive director of the Congress of California Seniors; Peter Kellison of the California Hospice Association; and Wesley Smith of the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide.

Friday's hearing was to gather information, and lawmakers did not take a vote on the proposed measure. Berg and Levine plan to introduce their bill later this month.