SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KTVU) – A bill to provide terminally ill patients the option to request aid-in-dying drugs from a physician in the state of California passed from the special session health committee on Tuesday.
Bill ABX2-15, called the End of Life Option Act, passed from the committee on a vote of 10 to 3.
The right-to-die movement has been galvanized by the high-profile case of 29-year-old Brittany Maynard, a California 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.
An earlier version of the bill, SB 128 stalled in a committee. Democratic Assemblymember Susan Talamantes Eggman of Stockton introduced the new version of the bill following two recent Superior Court rulings that have underlined that it is the responsibility of the legislature, not the courts, to change the law.
Nearly identical to SB128, the new bill would allow mentally-capable, terminally-ill adults the option to request a doctor’s prescription for aid-in-dying drugs to painlessly and peacefully hasten their death.
SB128 authors State Senators Bill Monning (D-Carmel) and Lois Wolk (D-Davis) had successfully guided the bill through the Senate before running aground in the Assembly. They joined Eggman by co-authoring ABX2-15, along with joint authors Assembly members Luis Alejo, D – Watsonville, and Mark Stone, D – Scotts Valley.
The bill’s safeguards for patients and physicians were strong enough for the California Medical Association, which had opposed SB128, to take a neutral position.
“The End of Life Option Act was fairly heard today and passed the test. The people of California, who are in overwhelming support of our effort, have been heard,” Eggman said.
The bill will next be heard in the Extraordinary Session on Health Care’s finance committee, before a vote on the Assembly floor.
ABX2-15 was first introduced two weeks ago.
The renewed push comes after at least two dozen states have introduced aid-in-dying legislation this year, though none has passed. Doctors are permitted to prescribe life-ending drugs in Oregon, Washington, Vermont and Montana.