SACRAMENTO — Legislation that would allow terminally ill Californians to end their lives with help from a doctor cleared an Assembly committee Friday after a low-key hearing on one of the year’s most controversial proposals.
Earlier this summer, it appeared the issue was dead for the year after a right-to-die bill stalled in the Assembly Health Committee over growing personal and religious concerns from a group of mostly Southern California Democrats.
But three weeks ago, lawmakers revived the measure in a special legislative session on health care funding. And now that Assembly Bill X2-15 has passed the lower house’s finance committee on a 5-3 vote, it will face a crucial test on the Assembly floor as soon as next week.
“I know this is a complicated issue,” said Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, who urged members of the committee to focus mostly on the bill’s cost when casting their votes. “In many ways, today’s vote doesn’t bind folks when this issue reaches the floor and we have to deal with policy.”
Because some Democrats who represent mostly Latino communities are still being heavily lobbied by the Catholic Church to vote no, Capitol observers have raised doubts about the bill’s chances in the Assembly. Still, the authors say they’re pleased the important, emotionally charged issue will at least be the subject of robust debate.
“Over 75 percent of Californians support this bill, and it is an issue that deserves to be considered by the entire Legislature,” said Sen. Bill Monning, D-Monterey, a co-author of the legislation.
The measure would allow doctors to prescribe lethal doses of drugs to mentally competent, terminally ill patients. It was the source of gripping, deeply personal testimony on the Senate floor and at a series of hearings earlier this year.
Since the life-ending prescription is not currently covered by Medi-Cal, the state’s health care program for the poor, analysts with the Assembly Finance Committee estimate the bill would cost only about $250,000 annually for the Department of Public Health to implement.
Doctors can prescribe life-ending drugs in Oregon, Washington, Montana and Vermont. And more than 20 states have introduced similar legislation this year.
The issue has long been debated in California, but supporters of the bill were inspired by the story of 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.
At Friday’s hearing, Maynard’s widower, Dan Diaz, again testified in favor of the bill, while disability rights advocates and oncologists testified against it.
“There are certain diseases that produce horrific and needless suffering at the end of life,” Diaz said. “The medical community and the state of California cannot abandon terminally ill people.”
Contact Jessica Calefati at 916-441-2101. Follow her at Twitter.com/Calefati.
