WASHINGTON (BP)--The California State Assembly has approved legislation that critics say would provide a backdoor way to legalize physician-assisted suicide.

The Assembly voted 41-32 for the bill, which is sponsored by Democrats Patty Berg and Lloyd Levine, leaders in unsuccessful efforts to pass assisted-suicide measures the last three years. The Senate has yet to vote on the legislation.

The Right to Know End-of-life Options Act, A.B. 2747, would require doctors and other health-care providers to inform patients diagnosed as terminally ill or with less than a year to live about their options for care at the end of their lives.

Among the options specified in the bill are palliative, or total, sedation and voluntary stopping of eating and drinking (VSED). Palliative sedation involves medicating a person until he is unconscious. The withholding of water and food through either palliative sedation or VSED normally results in the death of the patient by dehydration and/or starvation.

If a doctor objects to providing the end-of-life treatment chosen by a patient, the bill approved May 28 by the California Assembly permits him to refer the person to another health-care provider.

"This deceptive bill will cause death and shorten life, despite its claims," said Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families, in a written statement.

"Assisted suicide by total sedation ignores the sanctity of human life and violates life-affirming medical ethics. People who are ill need support, spiritual care and counseling if they're depressed," he said. "By transforming palliative sedation into a vehicle for assisted suicide, A.B. 2747 would transform doctors and nurses from healers and comforters into killers like Dr. Jack Kevorkian."

Berg denied the measure is another way of legalizing assisted suicide. "This bill just says the doctor needs to tell you what all your legal options are," she told the Eureka (Calif.) Times-Standard.

The support for the bill by the organization known as Compassion and Choices, however, demonstrates the legislation fits with its national effort to legalize assisted suicide, according to the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF). Compassion and Choices is promoting a similar bill in Vermont, DREDF reported.

Compassion and Choices was established in 2005 by the merger of Compassion in Dying and End-of-Life Choices. Before a name change in 2003, End-of-Life Choices was known as the Hemlock Society.

Oregon is the only state that has legalized assisted suicide.

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