California Lawmakers Renew Push To Pass Right-To-Die Bill

SACRAMENTO (CBSLA.com/AP) — California lawmakers announced Tuesday that they are making a new push to allow terminally ill patients to legally end their lives after religious groups and some fellow Democrats stalled efforts earlier this year.

The bill allowing doctors to prescribe life-ending drugs was renewed by legislators in a special session on health care convened by Gov. Jerry Brown.

"Support for this law runs across all demographics," State Sen. Pro Temp Kevin De Leon said Tuesday. He's joining a last-ditch effort to rescue the bill.

The right-to-die movement has been galvanized by the highly publicized case of 30-year-old Brittany Maynard,  the Anaheim woman with brain cancer who moved to Oregon to legally take her life. She argued in widely viewed online videos that she should have been able to access life-ending drugs in her home state.

Her husband, Dan Diaz, was in Sacramento Tuesday morning to lend his support for the measure. "Brittany died peacefully in her sleep," said Diaz.

Claremont McKenna College political science professor Jack Pitney said a lot of clout lies on the side of the opponents. First from the Catholic church, "Many of the Democrats are Catholic. They feel pressured by the Catholic church, pressured by their own beliefs," he said.

The other source of opposition he said comes from people with disabilities. "People with disabilities warn that there's a slippery slope, that if you allow euthanization in this case, you are going to have laws covering people with disabilities. People with disabilities will be pressured to end their lives," Pitney said.

"Californians should have more options available to those suffering constantly other than moving to other states or living in constant pain," Assemblyman Luis Alejo, D-Watsonville, said Tuesday at a press conference.

Religious groups and advocates for people with disabilities opposed a nearly identical California bill this year, saying it goes against the will of God and put terminally ill patients at risk for coerced death. The measure passed the state Senate but stalled in the Assembly.

Debbie Ziegler, Maynard's mother, criticized religious groups, including the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, that have been lobbying against the bill.

"What right does anyone of a specific religious faith have to say I should act in accordance with their fate in my death?" she said.

Advocates also have turned to courts, where they faced recent defeats in New Mexico and San Diego, where the judge said the issue should be resolved by state lawmakers.

Elizabeth Wallner, a single mother with Stage 4 colon cancer who filed the San Diego lawsuit, urged lawmakers to allow people like her to have a peaceful death at home.

"I don't want my son's last image to be of me struggling and in pain," she said.

The earlier California bill stalled in the Assembly Health Committee. Sens. Lois Wolk of Davis and Bill Monning of Carmel could not get support from fellow Democrats on the panel who lost parents to cancer and who were uncomfortable with allowing patients to kill themselves.

The new bill would bypass that committee. Brown called the special session to address funding shortfalls for programs providing health insurance to the poor and home health aides, but lawmakers are using the session to advance other contentious legislation related to health care.

The right-to-die advocacy group Compassion and Choices has said it would attempt to qualify a 2016 ballot measure if they lose in the Legislature.

In order for this bill to have any chance of becoming a state law, it must pass both houses of the state legislature before Sept. 11.

At least two dozen states have introduced aid-in-dying legislation this year, though none has passed a bill. Doctors already are allowed to prescribe life-ending drugs in Oregon, Washington, Vermont and Montana.

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