The California Assembly on Wednesday, Sept. 9, advanced a controversial measure that would allow terminally ill patients to legally end their lives.
After a lengthy emotional and passionate debate, lawmakers voted 42-33 to send AB X2-15 to the state Senate, which is expected to endorse the bill, the Associated Press reported. Assembly members cited their own experiences with death and religious faith to argue for and against the legislation, according to the news agency.
“A life lived in pain isn’t bearable for some people,” said Assemblyman Bill Quirk (D-Hayward), who voted in support of the bill.
Assemblywoman Catharine Baker (R-Pleasanton), who was until recently opposed to the measure, talked about how, as a Christian, she is unaware of what God has planned for people, nor why pain and suffering exist in the world.
“But I do know he is a merciful God. And we have the ability to allow others to have a choice,” she said, according to the Associated Press. “I believe it is cruel – nothing short of cruel – to deny them that choice in their final hours and days.”
California’s right to die bill, co-authored by Sen. Bill Monning (D-Monterey) and Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman (D-Stockton), gained traction after California resident Brittany Maynard, who had brain cancer, moved to Oregon last year to end her life.
Eggman, whose testimony was among the most powerful, according to Mercury News, spoke toward the end of the session right before lawmakers cast their votes.
“We are all going to die,” she told her colleagues, according to the publication. “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.”
When assembly members voted on the bill, the response of Dan Diaz, Maynard’s husband, was an emotional one, the Los Angeles Times reported.
“There is a sense of pride in the Legislature,” he said, according to the Times. “Today it reaffirmed the reason Brittany spoke to begin with. The Legislature will no longer abandon the terminally ill where hospice and palliative care are no longer an option. They can have a gentle passing.”
AB X2-15 is modeled after Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act and is nearly identical to the Senate’s version of the bill, SB128, which stalled in July in the Assembly Health Committee, San Jose Mercury News reported. Members of the committee were encouraged by the Catholic Church to vote against it, according to the publication.
Should the bill become law, it would permit physicians to prescribe lethal doses of drugs to terminally ill, mentally competent patients, Mercury News reported. It would also make California the fifth state to authorize the practice. In Montana, Oregon, Washington and Vermont, doctors are allowed to prescribe life-ending medication.
Opponents of the bill, include the Catholic Church, disabled rights activists and associations representing oncologists. Among concerns raised are that such legislation goes against God’s will, puts terminally ill patients at risk of forced death, and that poor and disabled individuals are left with limited end-of-life treatment options.
“This will push people into cheaper, lethal options,” Golden told the Associated Press. “There is no assurance that everyone will be able to choose treatment over assisted suicide.”
Another concern expressed by Laura Petrillo, a hospice medicine physician at UC San Francisco, is that the criteria for determining whether an individual is capable of giving informed consent is insufficient, the Times reported.
“This assessment can be very difficult in patients with dementia or cognitive impairment, and that murkiness leaves people with cognitive impairment open to risk of coercion from their families, care providers or even the medical system,” Petrillo said, according to the Times.
Should the right to die bill fail in the state Legislature, advocacy group Compassion and Choices has indicated it would try to get it to qualify as a 2016 ballot measure, the Associated Press reported.
If the legislation makes its way to the desk of California Gov. Jerry Brown, who formerly studied to become a Catholic priest and has declined to take a position on the issue, it remains unclear whether or not he will sign it.