Legislation: Response to Death With Dignity Bill

It was incredible timing that Kevin Uhrich’s article on Assemblywoman Diane Martinez’s Death With Dignity bill should be highlighted on the same day [March 30] that Pope John Paul II declares the Catholic Church’s strong stance in favor of life. I read the article with amusement and dismay at the incongruities in Martinez’s statements. She is “rewriting her bill . . . to say that the patient also must be in great physical pain” and she is “sponsoring the bill on behalf of senior citizens in her district.”

I was involved in the campaign against Proposition 161--Death With Dignity--which was strongly rejected (60% to 40%) by Martinez’s district as well as by Los Angeles County and the state of California in November, 1994, so I assume she forgot or doesn’t know how her district voted?

My concern with this bill is that there are so many loopholes through which people who are depressed and in pain could ask a doctor to help them out of their pain, without the assistance of psychotherapy to address their depression and their pain. A person suffering from diabetes has pain and could be assisted medically to manage that pain and live a productive and useful life without resorting to a 99-cent cure.

The bottom line of this very sick bill is that it would allow some people to pressure the elderly to opt for suicide in order to save a buck. It would allow some physicians to cover their mistakes by assisting in someone’s death rather than getting sued for malpractice. It would give people who are seriously depressed a way to die rather than receive the help that would get them back to normal life. MARTHA E. SERRANO-LUJAN Alhambra