Legislators in California have shelved plans to push through a socially explosive law that would allow doctors to help terminally ill patients commit suicide, officials said. The Death With Dignity Act, which would have given dying patients the right to hasten their own deaths by taking a lethal but legally prescribed dose of medicine, was derailed, at least temporarily, by political opposition to the move.The bill, which would have made California only the second US state to sanction euthanasia, failed to muster the 41 votes needed in the state assembly to pass it, its sponsors said.
