By Jessica Calefati and Tracy Seipel Staff writers
Posted:
SACRAMENTO -- Legislation that would allow doctors to prescribe life-ending medication to terminally ill patients cleared a major hurdle Wednesday when the state Assembly passed the measure on a 42 to 33 vote after an emotionally wrenching debate that left many legislators in tears.
Lawmakers testified passionately for and against the issue on the Assembly floor for almost two hours before casting their votes, with many speaking passionately about their personal experiences with death. "A life lived in pain isn't bearable for some people," said Assemblyman Bill Quirk, D-Hayward, who voted in favor of the measure along with 37 Democrats and three Republicans, including the Bay Area's lone Republican legislator, Catharine Baker.
The controversial "right to die" bill now goes to the state Senate, which had endorsed an earlier version of the legislation in June. That vote could happen as early as Thursday.
If, as expected, the measure gets the green light there, the legislation will head to Gov. Jerry Brown, who has not indicated whether he plans to sign the bill into law.
Recent comments by a Brown spokeswoman suggested that the governor did not like the legislative maneuvering to push the bill forward as part of a special legislative session on health care funding for the poor.
Co-authored by Sen. Bill Monning, D-Monterey, and Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman, D-Stockton, the bill was modeled after Oregon's Death with Dignity Act. The measure is practically identical to the previous Senate version, SB128.
"I'm surprised and delighted by the strength of the vote," Wolk said. "We were worried, yes, but we were cautiously optimistic following our conversations with members on both sides of the aisle."
That bill stalled in July in the Assembly Health Committee over personal and religious concerns from a group of mostly Southern California Democrats who were urged by the Catholic Church to vote against it.
AB X2-15 would allow doctors to prescribe lethal doses of drugs to mentally competent, terminally ill patients.
Doctors can prescribe life-ending drugs in Oregon, Washington, Montana and Vermont. And 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.
Brown talked to Maynard before she died. But the governor, who studied to be a Catholic priest in his youth, has not revealed any details of the conversation or in any way revealed his stance on the bill.
Some of the most powerful testimony came from Assemblywoman Eggman, D-Stockton, a co-author of the bill who spoke at the end of the session just before the vote.
"I respect each and every one of your positions. ... I know nobody takes this lightly,"she said. "I certainly don't take this lightly."
Eggman then recited her decades as a social worker -- and years of experience with patients in palliative care. She also noted that she was at the bedside of several dying relatives.
"Almost without question, they want to know if their life has meant something," she said, "and for the most part they want to die on their own terms.''
She said that Jennifer Glass, a cancer victim who did not live to see Wednesday's vote, had asked her relatives: "Please don't let me die on your terms. Let me die on my terms."
Yet, Eggman said, that is exactly what happened to Glass the very week before this bill was introduced last month. She was starving, dehydrated, suffocating and awakened a few times from heavy sedation in a panic.
"We are all going to die,'' Eggman told her colleagues. "As we look back at that trail of footsteps we have left (on Earth), some members want to be in control when their footstep makes that last mark. I respectfully ask for that vote.''
Contact Jessica Calefati at 916-441-2101. Follow her at Twitter.com/Calefati. Contact Tracy Seipel at 408-920-5343. Follow her at Twitter.com/taseipel.
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