"Don’t make California the suicide state,” a conservative group is warning.

An assisted suicide bill (AB 654) passed the Democrat-controlled Assembly Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, following two hours of debate. It now moves to the full Assembly, where a vote may come in May.

The bill, opposed by many physician groups and medical ethicists, would allow doctors to give “terminally ill” patients lethal doses of drugs to end their lives - if they request it.

The Campaign for Children and Families (CCF), a pro-family organization, was one of 30 organizations opposing the bill in committee. CCF’s legislative advocate, Kyle Green, testified that “giving the right to die to one gives the power to kill to another.”

CCF President Randy Thomasson noted the bill’s lack of safeguards: He warned that the state won’t investigate doctors or HMOs that may pressure sick and depressed patients to end their lives - in some cases, to save money.

“There are only two options here—life or death—and there is no turning back and no room for error,” Thomasson said in a press release. “If AB 654 becomes law, hospitals will be transformed from houses of healing into killing centers.”

During Tuesday’s committee hearing, Dr. Michael Sexton, president of the California Medical Association, testified that physicians and other caregivers are not supposed to abandon patients - “but remain at the bedside providing the compassionate care that we are trained to do.”

Dr. Robert Miller, an oncologist, called physician-assisted suicide “the wrong answer to the right question.” Miller, testifying on behalf of the Association of Northern California Oncologists and Medical Oncology Association of Southern California, said the bill focuses on “patient autonomy” when it should focus on doing everything possible to improve care at the end of life.

“Legalizing suicide strikes at the heart of what we do as physicians and it leads to ambiguity in the doctor-patient relationship,” Dr. Miller testified. “Under the pretense of providing compassion, the physician is relieved of his or her primary responsibility to the patient: to provide comfort to the suffering. It is the ultimate patient abandonment.”

Cindy Montanez (D-San Fernando) was the only Democrat on the committee to oppose the assisted suicide bill.

“I think ending the life of somebody prematurely, through suicide, is a tragedy—not just for the individual, but for all of his or her loved ones and also for all of humanity,” she said on Tuesday. “As a government we should not be party to assisted suicide,” she added.

Democratic Assemblywoman Patty Berg, who co-sponsored the bill, defended it on privacy grounds. “It is about the freedom of the individual to make choices—the freedom for your choices to be different from my choices,’’ Berg said.

Groups officially supporting the bill include the pro-euthanasia group Compassion & Choices; the American Civil Liberties Union, the California Alliance for Consumer Protection, the California National Organization for Women; the Conference of Delegates of California Bar Associations; Drug Policy Alliance Network; and End-of-Life Choices.

“Turning doctors into suicide collaborators is bad public policy and bad medicine,” said CCF’s Thomasson. He urged concerned Californians to immediately call their state legislators to oppose California becoming the suicide state.

A similar measure failed in the California Legislature in 1999.

Oregon is the only state with a law allowing assisted suicide. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments challenging that law in the fall.

The Campaign for Children and Families describes its mission as “empowering citizens to live out their values.”