'DEATH WITH DIGNITY' BEFORE LEGISLATURE.

Byline: Steve Geissinger Sacramento Bureau

SACRAMENTO - The divisive and emotional clash over doctor-assisted suicide swept from Oregon into California on Friday, with lawmakers from Van Nuys and Northern California rallying support at the Capitol for a similar law here but also plowing into mounting resistance.

Their legislation would make California only the second state in the nation to legalize physician-aided death.

``If I become terminally ill and doctors are unable to save me, I want the freedom to leave this world on my own terms,'' said Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, co-author of a bill based on Oregon's voter-approved law.

``As Californians approach the twilight of their lives,'' he said, ``they deserve to have control over their health care.''

Steve Mason, 64, poet laureate of the Vietnam Veterans of America, was among a string of the bill's supporters, who included representatives of some hospice and seniors groups, during a four-hour informational hearing.

Mason, an Oregon resident, told lawmakers he suffers from terminal lung cancer and has begun the process of using that state's Death with Dignity Act of 1997. Nearly 200 terminally ill patients have chosen physician-assisted death in Oregon since the law went into effect.

Members of the California Assembly Aging and Long-term Care and Judiciary committees, meeting jointly, also heard from a parade of opponents, which include the Catholic Church and the California Medical Association.

Church teaching ``respects life from conception through natural death,'' Tod Tamberg, a spokesman for Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony, said in an interview.

While recognizing that ``extraordinary means are not necessary to preserve life,'' said Tamberg, ``the taking of life under other circumstances is rejected by our faith.''

Lawmakers said the informational hearing on the measure, co-authored by Assemblywoman Patty Berg, D-Santa Rosa, has triggered a rare debate of conscience in the usually partisan Capitol.

Votes to come in the next few months, after the bill is formally introduced, will likely be determined more by religious convictions, moral beliefs and family stories than by political affiliations, they said.

Oregon's law, which is a model for the California bill, does not allow euthanasia, where a physician or somebody else administers deadly medication. Instead, it allows adults with less than six months to live to receive life-ending drugs from a doctor and take it themselves.

First, they must be determined to be mentally competent, see two physicians, make written and oral requests for the medicine and wait through a cooling-off time. Only the patient can make the decision, not a family member or guardian.

The federal government is still pursuing its legal challenges to Oregon's law.

Despite the failure of two previous efforts in California, the bill's authors expect to get their majority-vote measure through the Democrat- dominated Legislature. They also figure Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a social moderate, will seriously consider it.

The governor, so far, has made no public statements about the proposal.

Steve Geissinger, [phone]

sgeissinger(at)angnewspapers.com