SACRAMENTO >> Legislators have revived efforts to pass a right-to-die bill, which stalled last month in an Assembly committee and seemed destined for failure.
A proposal that would allow doctors to prescribe lethal doses of drugs to terminally ill patients has been re-packaged and will journey a different legislative route than what it faced last month, when it was sidelined due to lack of support.
The revised strategy, unveiled at a Tuesday morning news conference, puts the language of idled SB 128, “The End of Life Option Act,” into a new bill called AB 2x-15. That bill was introduced Monday afternoon in the Assembly.
The new bill, modeled after Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act, would allow mentally competent, terminally ill patients to obtain a legal dose of medication from a physician to ease their suffering by ending their lives.
Supporters’ seek to pitch it to a different — and perhaps more supportive — set of lawmakers than those it encountered last month in the Assembly Health Committee, where several Southern California Democrats, mostly Latinos, said they rejected it for personal reasons. The California Catholic Conference, which represents Catholic churches across the state, has firmly opposed the legislation.
“People are counting on us to win the freedom to end their life the way they choose,” Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman, D-Stockton, coauthor of the legislation.
Describing the legislative strategy, Eggman said: “We will use whatever means are available to us. We wanted this to go forward.”
The new effort has enlisted a more diverse set of supporters, including the Latino leader of the Senate, the Latino caucus president, an African American pastor and even Latino labor leader Dolores Huerta.
“We are white, we are black. We are Asian. We are Latina. We are gay. We are straight. We are young. We are older. And we are all standing for compassion and for choice,”said Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, the Catholic son of a doctor who is a co-sponsor of the measure.
Opponents condemned the strategy and vowed to continue their campaign to defeat the effort, saying it devalues life and puts vulnerable people at risk.
“This is a heavy-handed attempt to force through a bill that could not get any traction at all in committee,” according to a statement by the coalition Californians Against Assisted Suicide. “It’s one thing to run roughshod over the normal committee and legislative process to jam through a district bill, but to do that on what is literally a life-and-death issue is clearly abusive, and should concern all Californians.”
The bill was inspired by Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old UC-Berkeley graduate and newlywed diagnosed with aggressive terminal brain cancer who moved to Portland, Oregon, to receive physician-prescribed medication to end her life last year — because California does not allow it.
At Tuesday’s briefing, Maynard’s mother Debbie Ziegler said that “the conversation in California about options for the terminally ill is not going away.”
Maynard’s widower Dan Diaz compared his wife’s peaceful death to the final five days of his friend Jennifer Glass of San Mateo, who was unable to choose her own ending prior to her death from cancer earlier this month.
“Brittany took the control back from the tumor, so she could have a peaceful passing,” said Diaz. In contrast, Glass experienced unbearable pain, so was prescribed morphine, an approach known as “terminal sedation,” he said.
“It was not the dying process she wanted,” said Diaz. “Why should she have endured the five days in that manner? My wife passed gently. Jennifer’s death was not as gentle … it was absolutely not what she wanted.”
Through tears, Elizabeth Wallner, a supporter of the legislation who is dying of colon cancer, also spoke at Tuesday’s briefing, saying, “I don’t want my son’s last image of me to be struggling and in pain.”
This time around, the legislative effort has support from new corners: joint authors Assemblymen Luis Alejo, D-Salinas, and Mark Stone, D-Santa Cruz, among others.
“So far, it is has been a struggle” in the Assembly, Stone said. “We are here to make sure the legislation implements the will of the people of California. There is no dignity in suffering. There is dignity in the options we give people of how they manage their end-of-life process.”
Senate President Pro Tem Kevin De Leon, a coauthor of the bill, said “Californians are ready for this choice — and I think, with the appropriate safeguards, the authors have demonstrated this bill will give them this choice. The time is now to pass this important legislation.”
Eggman, a Catholic who is also a social worker and hospice volunteer, said she had discussed the issue at length with her bishop. “We agree on most things. This is one of those things where we disagree. My main takeaway from the bishop is that there is beauty and meaning in suffering. I told him: I agree with your choice to find that joy and meaning, but everyone may not desire that. It is a personal choice.”
United Farm Workers founder Dolores Huerta spoke at the news conference about her late mother’s agonizing death from terminal breast cancer and urged lawmakers to let Californians make end-of-life decisions on their own terms.
“We should be able to make these decisions, these private, personal decisions, in consultation with our doctors, our families and our faith — free from government interference,” Huerta said.
African-American Rev. Madison Shockley used scripture to make his case for the End of Life Option Act, recounting the story of Saul, who was badly wounded and died by his own sword to prevent his adversaries from torturing him to death.
.”Those who would benefit from this legislation are not much different than Saul,” said Shockley, pastor of the Pilgrim United Church of Christ in Carlsbad.
“They know that they are going to die. The only question is the manner and quality of that death.”
The first stop for the new bill will be the Assembly’s Committee on Public Health and Developmental Services. A hearing will be held in a week, said Eggman.
Opponents criticized efforts to direct it to that committee, saying it doesn’t belong in a setting devoted to healthcare financing. “That should be truly frightening to those on MediCal and subsidized health care, who quite logically fear a system where prescribing suicide pills could be elevated to a treatment option,” according to a statement from Californians Against Assisted Suicide.
If it passes that committee, it will then move to the Assembly Finance Committee.
These committees, set up and appointed by the speaker of the Assembly, are smaller than the standing committees, which considered the bill before.
If it succeeds in those two committees, the bill will go to the Assembly floor then to the Senate — and ultimately, the desk of Gov. Jerry Brown. Although he spoke with Maynard before she died, the governor, who is a former Jesuit seminarian, has not indicated whether he will sign the bill.
The measure is modeled after a similar law in Oregon with two key differences. It requires a translator for non-English speakers. And pharmacists, not just physicians, are given legal immunity for helping people die.
Unlike the Senate version, it includes some “reporting forms” for physicians.
Senate sponsors Bill Monning, D-Carmel, and Lois Wolk, D-Davis, defended the unusual strategy, saying time was of the essence.
“This is the most promising and the most expeditious pathway for becoming law, given the urgency for California families living with loved ones with terminal illness,” said Monning.
Two recent court cases — one in San Francisco, the other in San Diego — also inspired them to keep trying, said Wolk. “The judges there looked at the issue and said ‘aid in dying’ is something that the legislature needs to act on,” she said. “We believe that it is time.”
