Catholic leaders in California, facing an energized drive to legalize assisted suicide, are reviewing lessons learned in Oregon.

In 1997, advocates of the Oregon Death with Dignity Act used anti-Catholic rhetoric to combat a repeal bid. One group paying for radio ads called itself the "Don't Let 'Em Shove Their Religion Down Your Throat Committee."

"We're well aware of what happened in Oregon and how the church became a target and how that made a difference," said Carol Hogan, communications director of the California Catholic Conference, which represents the state's Catholic bishops on public policy issues.

"The Western states all suffer from the malady of 'Don't tell me what to do,' and are suspicious of religion," Hogan added in a telephone interview with the Catholic Sentinel, Portland archdiocesan newspaper.

California's Senate Judiciary Committee was expected to hold hearings soon on a bill to legalize assisted suicide. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has said he would rather see assisted suicide addressed in a voter initiative than in the Legislature.

"I don't think 120 legislators and I should make the decision," he said Jan. 24 at the Sacramento Press Club. While saying he would abide by the choice of voters, he indicated he would veto an assisted suicide bill from lawmakers.

Last year, a measure resembling Oregon's law never made it out of committee.

But California backers of legalizing assisted suicide have taken at least symbolic hope in the Jan. 17 U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law. The court rejected the U.S. attorney general's attempt to use federal drug control laws to stop doctors from prescribing lethal doses of medicine to people who are terminally ill.

Edward Dolejsi, executive director of the California Catholic Conference, told the Sentinel that the Supreme Court ruling was made on a technicality, not the larger issue of whether assisted suicide is constitutional or good public policy. He said the decision should have no bearing on California's debate.

Dolejsi said the church and the coalition opposed to assisted suicide hold that legalization "would betray our society's commitment to the common good and corrupt the patient-physician relationship." The coalition fighting assisted suicide includes a union of low-income residents, disabled Californians, the California Medical Association, several hospices, the state's Catholic dioceses and right-to-life groups.

Hogan said her state -- with 10 times more people than Oregon -- has a greater number of vulnerable people. California's broader ethnic diversity and more people who lack medical insurance "all makes people more vulnerable," she said.

Over the past decade, the idea of legalizing Oregon-style assisted suicide has returned again and again to lawmakers in California. It has always failed.

"A dying person's request for death is almost always a cry for help coming from his or her fear of helplessness and abandonment," the California Catholic Conference said when assisted suicide legislation was proposed in 2004. "And the medical community knows that such a request which is met with adequate palliation, treatment for depression and/or loving comfort care will in almost every case be rescinded."

Meanwhile in Oregon, the state's largest health provider, Providence Health System, said it had not altered its policy against assisted suicide after the Supreme Court's Jan. 17 decision.

"We continue to oppose it, and we continue to disallow our employees from participating in any way in it," said Father John Tuohey, director of the Providence Center for Health Care Ethics. "The court ruling doesn't really change anything. Our practices are the same."

Providence doctors are barred not only from writing lethal prescriptions, but also from evaluating patients to see if they are competent to decide to use the law. Physicians also may not give the second terminal diagnosis opinion that patients need to qualify for assisted suicide.

Providence employees -- whether they are physicians, home-health nurses or hospice staff -- cannot be present at an assisted suicide. They are not allowed to suggest it to anyone and may not encourage it if patients bring it up, except to ask why the patient is considering assisted suicide.

"We make a distinction between helping you decide what to do and asking questions that will help improve care," Father Tuohey said.

---CNS