SACRAMENTO - California took a step Tuesday toward becoming the second state in the nation to allow terminally ill patients to hasten their own deaths, when a key Assembly policy committee approved the California Compassionate Choices Act.

Oregon has had such a law for seven years.

The Assembly Judiciary Committee approved Assembly Bill 654, by Assemblywoman Patty Berg, D-Eureka, and Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, during a morning hearing in the state Capitol.

The measure would allow terminally ill adults of sound mind, with less than six months to live, to ask for and get life-ending medication. Modeled on Oregon's landmark Death With Dignity Act, AB 654 was amended Tuesday to include a series of restrictions designed to strengthen the layers of protection included in the Oregon Act.

Among the existing protections:

• Two physicians must agree the patient has less than six months to live.
  
• The patient must make multiple requests.
  
• The patient is counseled about other alternatives.
  
• Physician must ensure that the patient was not suffering from mental illness.
  

Among the added protections:

• The patient must take the medication without assistance.
  
• Patient must have mental capacity to make decisions about his or her own medical care.
  
• Physicians must ensure that the patient's judgment is not altered by medication.
  
• Increased protection against coercion.
  
• Patient must receive written information about palliative care alternatives.

"We are happy that the Judiciary Committee agrees with 70 percent of Californians who want this right," Levine said, referring to the results of a recent Field Poll that showed across-the-board support.

"I'm very proud of my colleagues who sided with dying patients and took a stand for privacy rights," said Berg.

Former Oregon Gov. Barbara Roberts, who was in office in when voters initially approved the Death With Dignity Act, told lawmakers that the bill was good public policy in Oregon, and would be good public policy in California.

Disability rights advocate Alan Toy also addressed the committee. Toy, a project director in UCLA's School of Public Policy and Social Research, has a dual career as a film and television actor, portraying characters who, like himself, use wheelchairs.

He told the committee that even though some disability rights advocates strongly oppose the bill, a large number of people with disabilities support it.

"They would prefer you to believe that all people with disabilities oppose (it)," he said. "We do not."

The bill will face scrutiny in the Assembly Appropriations Committee before it can be taken up by the entire body. If the full Assembly passes the bill, it would face similar tests in the state Senate before going to the governor's desk.