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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. Supreme Court ruling backing Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law gives a major boost to a similar measure languishing in the California legislature since last year, lawmakers said on Tuesday. "I believe we will get this bill passed this year and signed by the governor," said Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, co-author of a law to allow state residents to obtain lethal medication if they had less than six months to live. Levine, a Democrat, spoke after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected legal arguments by the Bush Administration seeking to strike down Oregon's pioneering Death with Dignity Act....

That’s Right! Thanks to the legislature’s “gut and amend” process physician assisted suicide is alive and well. All of the language of AB 654 (Berg) , which failed to get enough votes to pass the Assembly, has been put into AB 651 (Levine) which did pass the Assembly and is currently in the Senate. AB 651 As introduced, dealt with disease management, but the amended version of AB 651 is the reincarnated version of the California Compassionate Choices Act. My guess is that the author, Assemblyman Levine believes that it will have an easier time passing in the Senate. The...

Sacramento, CA (LifeNews.com) -- A bill to make California the second state in the nation to legalize assisted suicide failed to get enough support in the state Assembly to be brought up for a vote. Bill sponsors plan to attach their measure to legislation in the Senate, but the bill will still have to come back to the Assembly for consideration. The California legislature has reached the halfway point of the session and all bills hoping to stay alive must clear one chamber. Assembly members Patty Berg and Lloyd Levine, both Democrats, say they are just a few votes shy...

SACRAMENTO — Facing a potentially narrow defeat in the Assembly, Bay Area and Los Angeles lawmakers used an eleventh-hour political maneuver late Wednesday to catapult their landmark doctor-assisted suicide bill into the Senate. The move, called a "gut and amend," which transfers the legislation into a Senate bill, bypassed a Friday deadline for passage out of the house of origin and keeps the measure alive. The proposal has triggered widespread, emotional debate, with major forces lining up on either side. In committee hearings and behind the scenes, the clash has grown for months to the point where numerous Assembly members...

Sacramento -- Landmark votes expected this week in the Assembly on same-sex marriage and physician-assisted suicide appear so close that their outcomes could rest on a sole lawmaker's last-minute deliberations on morality, faith and the role of government in society, according to interviews with several undecided Democrats. With the Assembly poised today to take up AB19 by Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, to legalize same-sex marriage in California, many Democrats said Tuesday that they remain undecided on the issue even after months of debate. With Republicans uniformly opposed to the measure, Leno said passage would likely come with only the...