Berg: California ready for physician-assisted suicide

Article Last Updated: Thursday, November 25, 2004 - 6:10:17 AM PST
Berg: California ready for physician-assisted suicide


Andrew Bird


The Times-Standard

SACRAMENTO -- For Patty Berg, the issue of physician-assisted dying has a connubial connection.

Humboldt's own assemblywoman said she will partner with fellow Democratic Assemblyman Lloyd Levine of Van Nuys to sponsor a bill that would legalize physician-assisted death in California.

The bill, which has not yet been drafted, Berg said Wednesday, will be modeled after a similar bill the Legislature rejected in 1999, which was modeled on Oregon's voter-approved physician aid-in-dying law of 1997.

Under Oregon's law, the only one of its kind in the nation, a doctor can prescribe life-ending drugs to terminally ill patients who have been diagnosed with fewer than six months to live. The patient must be deemed mentally competent and be able to renew the request within 15 days.
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http://www.times-standard.com/Stories/0,1413,127~2896~2558095,00.html

Voters originally passed it in 1994, but the legislature made us vote on it again, and it passed with an even larger majority in 1996, becoming official law in 1997. It appears to have worked quite well, thus far.

I am surprised -- somewhat -- that the push for similar laws via the initiative process has not moved forward since then. The scare tactics used to defeat such laws in the past should be easily deflated by the history in Oregon and other places on the planet.

A patient has the right to say they want a good death. There is no reason for anyone to have a long drawn out painful death. Kudos to Patty Berg!