State House approves assisted suicide bill
By Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Capitol Bureau Chief
Members of the state House worked into the night to advance more than 100 proposals yesterday, giving preliminary approval to bills allowing terminally ill patients to end their lives with the help of a doctor but rejecting an effort to repeal the traffic camera enforcement law.
The crunch of activity at the Capitol was in preparation for a legislative deadline next week and members of the Senate also were preparing bills to exchange with the House. Some of the House measures approved in floor voting yesterday now advance to the state Senate for further consideration, while others must survive one more House vote next week before advancing to the Senate.
The House approved one measure that would put a proposed amendment to the state Constitution on the November ballot, asking voters whether the terminally ill should be allowed to request lethal doses of drugs to end their lives. The other bill would itself make it legal for terminally ill, competent people to obtain lethal prescriptions that they could take themselves. Gov. Ben Cayetano's administration introduced both bills.
Both measures won preliminary approval last night, and will face another House vote next week before advancing to the Senate. So far Senate Health and Human Services Chairman David Matsuura, R-2nd (S. Hilo, Puna) has refused to consider the bills, which suggests they are unlikely to pass this year.
House Judiciary Chairman Eric Hamakawa said he applauds the efforts of the medical profession and hospice care but said they still have a long way to go in making people comfortable in their final hours.
"The fact of the matter, Mr. Speaker, is people who have terminal conditions in the last remaining days or hours of their lives are dying in pain, unbearable pain that no one should have to deal with," said Hamakawa, D-3rd (S. Hilo, Puna). "All this bill allows is for people who are ... faced with that condition, or that end, to provide for themselves to be relieved of that suffering."
But bill opponent Rep. Mark Moses said in 1989 he had lupus and doctors advised him he had at most five years to live. "I could have given up, too." In 1993 his mother was told by doctors she was on the verge of death. In three months, she will turn 97, he said.
The point, Moses said, is doctors make mistakes. He warned that by passing the bill, lawmakers will be going down "a slippery slope." He said people someday may advocate the death of 45-year-olds to avoid paying for their retirements.
Also opposing the bill was Rep. Mike Kahikina, who said his greatest fear is also "what will happen next." He said in the Netherlands, which has a similar law, many patients who are assisted with "suicide" do not clearly express that they wish to die. Their doctors merely assume that is what they want, said Kahikina, D-43rd (Barbers Point, Wai'anae, Ma'ili).
Hamakawa said under the proposals, patients are free at any time to back out of any arrangement they have made to die.
Rep. Nobu Yonamine recalled his mother, who was in a prolonged vegetative state at the end of her life, and said he would not want the same to happen to him. Yonamine, D-35th (Pearl City, Pacific Palisades) argued that a decision to end one's life should be a personal one.
"It's about time we had a public discussion and let the people decide," Yonamine said.
In other business, House Democrats defeated an effort by the 19 House Republicans to advance a bill to repeal the state's photo enforcement program. The Republicans attempted to substitute the repeal bill for another measure the Democrats are advancing that would modify, but not repeal, the photo enforcement program.
House Minority Floor Leader Charles Djou called the traffic enforcement program "a failure" and "a high-tech bounty hunter system that catches not only law-breakers but law abiding citizens."
Rep. Kika Bukoski, R-10th (Upcountry Maui) said correspondence to his office is running 50-to-1 against the traffic camera program, and that lawmakers have an obligation to heed "the people's will."
House Transportation Committee Chairman Joe Souki said the Democrats' bill among other things would change the system so the company that operates the system will be paid a flat rate instead of a percentage of fines collected. The Democrats' bill would also prevent the tickets from affecting drivers' insurance premiums, said Souki, D-8th (Waiehu, Ma'alaea, Napili).
Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8070.
