Assisted Suicide Proposal Returns to California

Assemblywoman Patty Berg has introduced legislation to legalize assisted suicide in California. If passed, it would make California only the second state to legalize assisted suicide, after Oregon.

Meanwhile, the United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case involving Oregon's law. (See story, page 6.)

Nearly identical to the language used in Oregon's "Death with Dignity" law, AB 654 is being opposed by a coalition of groups including disability advocates, medical and religious organizations, and pro-life groups including the California ProLife Council (CPLC), the state's NRLC affiliate. There was a four-hour-long hearing on the proposed legislation February 4 at which opponents, many of them people with disabilities, spoke against the measure.

The California Hospice Association opposes the proposed legislation. "The association believes we should not spend limited resources helping people end their lives because they fear loss of autonomy and suffering," said Peter Kellison, a spokesman for the group. Instead, California should "remove the barriers that result in those fears," he said, according to the newspaper, the Tidings.

The California Medical Association is also a foe of physician-assisted suicide, the Tidings reported.

Mike Spence, vice-president of CPLC, told NRL News, "We have faced these folks before both in the legislative arena as well as in statewide initiatives. We know that they will use every trick so we are not going to rest until this measure - - in all its forms - - is truly and effectively dead."

California was the first U.S. public-policy target of assisted suicide advocates. In 1985 Hemlock Society founder Derek Humphry moved to Los Angeles. Humphry used his own self-admitted experience in the death of his first wife to promote similar actions by others and a change in the law to make such activity immune from prosecution.

In 1988 Hemlock sponsored a ballot proposition, Proposition 61, to California voters. The measure failed.

Various organizational changes within the euthanasia movement placed an emphasis on education and organization within California until another "Death with Dignity" proposal was presented to the California Legislature in 1999. That measure was also defeated.

"We know that euthanasia advocates are relentless in their desire to justify their approach to the medically vulnerable," said Spence, "and we must be as tenacious in protecting their lives."