Quick death for end-of-life bill

Measure inspired by Schiavo case nixed by health committee

John C. Ensslin, Rocky Mountain News

Published February 17, 2006 at midnight

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A bill that sought to address difficult end-of-life cases like Terri Schiavo's died in a Senate committee Thursday.

By a 5-2 vote, the Health and Human Services Committee rejected a bill that would have made it harder to remove tubes providing nourishment and water to patients who are incapable of letting their wishes be known.

Sen. Douglas Lamborn, R-Colorado Springs, said he introduced the bill in reaction to the controversy over Schiavo, a comatose Florida woman who died in March 2005, 15 years after becoming comatose and 13 days after being disconnected from her food and water tubes.

The move was taken after a long legal battle that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Schiavo's husband, Michael, said she had indicated that she would not want to be kept alive by extraordinary means if she were reduced to a vegetative state. Other family members contested that and the debate ended up in the courts, which finally sided with her husband.

Representatives of the Colorado Medical Society and the American Civil Liberties Union testified against the bill. Spokespersons for Colorado Right to Life and the Catholic Conference spoke in support of the measure.

The lawmakers also heard from Kate Adamson, a California woman who recovered from a catastrophic stroke that left her paralyzed. She described listening to doctors at her bedside talking about her impending death.

"No one knows what they will want at the end of their life until they get there," said Adamson, who spoke in support of the bill.

Lamborn said his proposal, Senate Bill 158, sought to expand an existing law that governs the powers of third-party proxies to make decisions about medical treatment for a person unable to do so.

That law states that the legislature does not condone "mercy killings."

"This bill is just to make sure that that intent is carried out," Lamborn said.

The bill would have struck a sentence in the existing law that allows food and water to be withdrawn when two doctors trained in neurology or neurosurgery certify that it is simply prolonging the act of dying by a patient with no hope of recovery.

Lamborn said the bill would not apply in cases where the patient had left a "living will" or other instructions regarding terminal care.

"This bill has nothing to do with withholding medical treatment," Lamborn told the committee. "I think food and water is part of life and is not medication."

Several lawmakers talked about their own experiences in dealing with the death of a family member.

Sen. Brandon Shaffer, D-Boulder, asked one witness, "Who decides? I, for one - as a member of the government - don't think it's my decision to make."

"I don't see what a state law adds to this process," he later added. "I think it only interferes."

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