Modbee.com
Last Updated: January 15, 2004, 07:46:44 AM PSTBy ERIC STERN
BEE CAPITOL BUREAUSACRAMENTO -- Sen. Jeff Denham, R-Merced, lost a bid Wednesday to give organ donors the right to keep their organs out of prisoners' bodies.
"I think this is a mean-spirited bill and there's no other way to put it," said Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, who voted against the measure.
Denham's legislation, Senate Bill 38, went down to defeat on a 1-6 vote in the 13-member Senate Health and Human Services Committee. He is not a member of the committee.
His proposal underscored the shortage of organ donors: Nationwide, the number of people awaiting transplants is 83,000, including 8,000 in Northern and Central California, said Mary Wallace, a spokeswoman for the California Transplant Donor Network.
Only 1,000 people in the region received transplants last year, she said.
"I don't think that we need to continue to lose lives, especially those that aren't incarcerated," said Denham, whose father died a year ago while waiting for a kidney and liver transplant.
But committee members said Denham was going about it the wrong way.
They dismissed the bill as discriminatory and raised fears that it would lead to other groups getting blacklisted.
The committee chairwoman, Sen. Deborah Ortiz, D-Sacramento, said the state has an obligation to provide prisoners "the highest and best" medical care.
Denham's bill grew out of the controversy surrounding a 2002 heart transplant of a state inmate, who was serving a 14-year sentence for robbery. The transplant at Stanford University cost the state $2 million, and the inmate died a year later.
"It created an outrage," Denham said. "People are tearing up their donor cards."
Asked if a prisoner's life is worth less than that of another citizen, Denham said: "I think that's up to the individual donor and each individual donor should have that choice."
Under the bill, organ donation registry forms provided by the Department of Motor Vehicles would have asked donors if they wished to prohibit their donations from going to anyone in a state prison or county jail.
"I don't think we should play God, that we should be choosing who should live and who shouldn't live because of the things they've done," said Colleen Baptista of Millbrae, who testified at the hearing.
After her 20-year-old son's accidental death in 2001, his heart, liver, kidneys and pancreas were given to patients in need of a transplant.
"It doesn't matter how old they are or who they are, they were given that chance," she said.
Bee Capitol Bureau reporter Eric Stern can be reached at 916-326-5544 or estern@modbee.com.
