For the third time in three years, assisted suicide failed in the Assembly, as California's State Assembly Bill 374 (Berg/Levine) legalizing physician-assisted suicide was pulled from the Assembly Floor due to lack of support. Assisted suicide proponents intend to make AB 374 a two-year bill that could appear on the Assembly Floor early in 2008.

Modeled after Oregon's Doctor-Assisted Suicide law, AB 374 received widespread opposition in California from Democratic and Republican lawmakers, many state and national disability rights organizations, the California Medical Association, the California League of United Latin American Citizens, the California Hospice and Palliative Care Association, Oncologists Association of Northern and Southern California and the National Hospice and Palliative Care Association, among others.

"Assisted Suicide would lead California further down a path of cost versus care inherent in HMO decision," said Angel Luevano, immediate past chairman, California League of United Latin American Citizens. "No matter what so-called 'protections' are in this bill, the most vulnerable will be open to pressures of an earlier death so they will not be a financial burden to their loved ones, or to the health care systems already overburdened with the uninsured."

Members of Californians Against Assisted Suicide --- a coalition of disability rights groups, medical professionals, civil rights organizations, bioethicists and others --- praised the decision to shelve the bill. "I think legislators understand the devastating impact assisted suicide would have on the disability community in California," said Marilyn Golden of the Disability Rights, Education and Defense Fund." Anyone should see a huge red flag over this bill when you consider the wide collection of disability rights organizations opposed to this legislation," she added.

Carol Hogan, communications director for the California Catholic Conference, which represents the state's bishops on public policy matters, said the coalition owes "a huge debt of gratitude to the 'grass-roots' volunteers, many of them Catholic parishioners" for defeat of the bill.