Assembly Panel Approves Assisted-Suicide Bill

A bill to allow terminally ill Californians to end their lives with lethal prescriptions cleared its first legislative hurdle Tuesday, amid controversy over privacy issues and potential abuse.

The 5-4 vote in the Assembly Judiciary Committee puts California a step closer to becoming the second state in the nation, after Oregon, to allow doctor-assisted suicide

Much testimony in the hearing centered on Oregon’s seven years of experience with helping the terminally ill kill themselves. Voters there passed the “Death With Dignity” act as an initiative in 1994 and reaffirmed it in 1997.

Witnesses included former Oregon Gov. Barbara Roberts, who served from 1991 to 1995. Her husband, a state senator who died of lung cancer, several times introduced doctor-assisted suicide bills that failed in the Oregon Legislature.

Roberts told California legislators that the law had been used sparingly and led to improvements in Oregon’s end-of-life care. From 1998 to 2004, according to annual reports by the Oregon Department of Human Services, 326 prescriptions for lethal doses were written, leading to 208 deaths. Ninety percent of those using the law were receiving hospice care tailored to ease their deaths.

“Oregon voters became the best-informed Americans in any of our 50 states on the subjects of dying, pain medication, heroic medical procedures, advanced directives and hospice care,” said Roberts of the debate over the initiative. “Dying was discussed over dinner and in bowling alleys, in hair salons and barbershops, gyms and classrooms and churches.”

Kenneth R. Stevens, Jr., a professor in the radiation oncology department at Oregon Health Sciences University, and an opponent of the Oregon law, questioned its safeguards. He said only 5% of those dying from doctor-assisted suicide in 2003 and 2004 had received mental health consultations.

Stevens also reminded California lawmakers of an Oregon man who awoke 65 hours after taking the supposedly lethal prescription in February.

“The fact that the word ‘safeguards’ is used is an indication that assisted suicide is dangerous and unsafe for the general public,” he said.

The hearing drew dozens of doctors, nurses, religious leaders and people who had struggled with a loved one’s death. Although each was were asked to give lawmakers only his or her name, affiliation and position on the bill, some interjected brief personal stories and statements.

Those included a supporter who considered dropping his dying partner from a 10-story hospital window to end her pain, and opponent Anthony Moreno, a 42-year-old mortgage broker from Rohnert Park in Northern California who was told he wouldn’t survive a coma that followed a bicycle accident when he was 7.

The authors said their bill was about autonomy and dignity, and that more violent suicides among the terminally ill would occur without the law.

“The question before you today is not whether you approve of a terminally ill patient hastening his or her own death,” said Assemblywoman Patty Berg (D-Eureka), one of the bill’s co-authors.

“It is about whether you will uphold our civil rights to privacy. It is about whether we will impose the beliefs of one group on the rest of the society or whether we will let people listen to the calling of their own consciences and make their own decisions,” Berg said.

Opponents, including many disabled people, told lawmakers to focus instead on covering millions of uninsured Californians with health benefits. They warned that giving terminally ill people the right to get a lethal prescription that they take themselves could easily lead to euthanasia, in which a doctor makes the decision to administer lethal drugs, and the “mercy” killing of disabled or mentally impaired people without their permission.

Assemblyman Tim Leslie (R-Tahoe City) said legalization of euthanasia in the Netherlands began with attempts to help the dying commit suicide.

“I can’t see any reason why, given a period of time -- I don’t know if it would be 10 years or 50 years -- that California, once it starts down this road, wouldn’t do the same thing,” he said.

Berg and co-author Assemblyman Lloyd Levine (D-Van Nuys) argued that their bill would forbid euthanasia. Recent amendments would specify that patients administer the lethal drugs themselves, that a doctor determine that patients had the mental capacity to understand the implications of requesting the prescription and that relatives or a third party could not coerce a patient, they said.

The lawmakers promised to amend the bill to allow doctors and hospitals to opt out of participating in assisted suicide.

Under the bill, two doctors would have to diagnose a person as having six months or less to live, and the patient would have to request the lethal prescription twice -- once orally and once in writing -- over 15 days. Also, the doctor would have to inform the patient of the risks and alternatives, including pain control and hospice care.

The bill, AB 654, must pass the Assembly Appropriations Committee and the full Assembly and Senate before it can be sent to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.