Hearings begin in California Assembly on assisted suicide proposal

Published: 2005-02-15

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CNS) -- California Assemblywoman Patty Berg said she is not trying to legalize euthanasia or assisted suicide, but her supporters as well as her opponents at a Feb. 4 hearing at the Capitol in Sacramento clearly understood that her proposed legislation would allow doctors to help terminally ill patients kill themselves. Berg, one of two authors of the measure, said it "is not euthanasia in which a physician or someone else directly administers a medication to end another's life; neither is it assisted suicide in which someone else assists the patient in hastening their own death." The bill is not in final form and has not been formally introduced, but it follows the lead of Oregon's 7-year-old law, she said, and would give "mentally competent, terminally ill Californians who have less than six months to live the right to control their own death." If the measure ever becomes law, California would become only the second state in the nation, after Oregon, to legalize physician-assisted suicide. The bill would have four requirements: The patient must have less than six months to live; the patient must be mentally competent; the first two requirements must both be confirmed by two doctors; and the patient can only administer the medication on his or her own. Opponents, many of them people with disabilities, spoke out strongly against the proposed legislation as being what they consider the first step down a slippery slope. At the bottom, they said, are people who doctors help to die but who were never asked if they wanted to die.

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