Nunez backs suicide measure

Calling himself a “Johnny-come-lately” to the issue, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez announced Thursday that he will back a bill to allow terminally ill people to hasten their deaths with lethal prescriptions.

Similar bills have failed in the last two years, but supporters say Nunez, a Los Angeles Democrat, could make the difference.

“We are more hopeful now than ever that we can get this bill signed into law,” said the bill’s author, Assemblywoman Patty Berg (D-Eureka).

Nunez said he is “ready to buck my church,” despite an entreaty from Cardinal Roger M. Mahony. The Catholic Church, which is against suicide, helped defeat the previous “death with dignity” legislation.

Nunez said he would call Mahony today. But he added: “I think the toughest conversation I’m going to have is with my Catholic mother, who wanted me to be a priest.”

He said Berg and her fellow author, Assemblyman Lloyd Levine (D-Van Nuys), persuaded him that the proposal, modeled on a 9-year-old Oregon law, is not about suicide but about “how people are going to live the last days of their lives.”

“They’re going to die,” Nunez said of those who would qualify for the lethal drugs. “The question is how much pain and suffering is involved and how much of that person’s dignity is taken away from him or her.”

The bill, AB 374, would allow people with less than six months to live who have been declared mentally competent to get drugs that they would administer themselves.

A “death with dignity” bill passed two Assembly committees in 2005, but lacked the support to go further. The next year, the legislation failed in the Senate Judiciary Committee when then-Sen. Joe Dunn, a Santa Ana Democrat, cast the deciding vote. Dunn is now executive director of the California Medical Assn., which represents 35,000 doctors. Association officials oppose the legislation, saying that it contradicts a doctor’s ethical duties.

Other opponents include advocates for the disabled, who say that such a law could lead to the unnecessary deaths of poor, disabled and elderly people who may feel pressured by a cost-driven managed care system.

“Assisted suicide purports to be about free choice and self-determination,” Marilyn Golden, a policy analyst with the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, wrote in a letter sent Wednesday to senators. “But there is significant danger that many people would take this ‘escape’ due to external pressure.”

In a March 2006 survey of Californians, the Field Poll found that 70% of adults agreed that the terminally ill should have the right to life-ending medication. Support was strong regardless of religious background, gender or race.

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nancy.vogel@latimes.com