Bill Monning finesses the system to keep End-of-Life act moving.

There came a moment in the days leading up to Jennifer Glass’ slow and awful death Aug. 11 that she awoke from what’s called palliative sedation, feeling like she was drowning.

The drugs meant to keep her calm and free of pain had, in that moment, failed. Instead of remaining sedated, the 53-year-old was left in overwhelming panic at her inability to breathe. Yet it would be days before she died, in the San Francisco Bay Area home she shared with her husband of three years, Harlan Seymour. As Seymour told a reporter, by the time Glass started palliative sedation seven days before her death, she was in so much pain she couldn’t say goodbye. His wife, a non-smoker, died in slow-motion of lung cancer.

She also died against her wishes. If death was inevitable, Glass maintained, she wanted it on her own terms. She wanted an option to take a fatal dose of medication, an out that would allow her to die in peace and on her own timetable.

“I’m doing everything I can to extend my life,” Glass wrote last April on the Huffington Post, where she was a regular contributor. “No one should have the right to prolong my death.”

Glass was a staunch advocate of SB 128, the End-of-Life Option Act authored by state senators Bill Monning, D-Carmel, and Lois Wolk, D-Davis, that would allow mentally competent adults diagnosed with a terminal illness with six months or less to live to obtain medication from a physician and end their own lives.

On July 7, faced with the reality that the bill would likely not succeed in the Assembly Health Committee (too many legislators inflicting their personal belief system on others), Monning and Wolk pulled it. At the time, Monning said if they couldn’t successfully get the legislation passed, the advocacy group Compassion & Choices was going to get it on the 2016 ballot.

But on Tuesday, a group of legislators and luminaries, including United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta, were on hand as a version of SB 128 was reintroduced. Called Assembly Bill X2-15, it’s nearly identical to SB 128. It’s also a deft move on Monning and Wolk’s part: AB X2-15 will be taken up in what’s called an extraordinary session focused on health. While Gov. Jerry Brown called the extraordinary session to focus on healthcare financing, the session allows legislators to bring forth related bills. And because it’s a special session, the Assembly Health Committee that will consider it this time around has a slightly different composition, with fewer members who were opposed to it the first time.

The new version of the bill was brought forth by Assemblymembers Susan Eggman, D-Stockton; Luis Alejo, D-Watsonville; and Mark Stone, D-Watsonville.

“I never predict outcomes, but we have strong and growing support,” Monning says. “For people living with the urgency of a terminally ill diagnosis, legislation is the preferred path.

At the Tuesday press conference, Debbie Ziegler also spoke. She’s the mother of Brittany Maynard, the 29-year-old newlywed who, with a diagnosis of terminal brain cancer, moved to Oregon so she could exercise her right to die under that state’s law. Ziegler, carrying a framed picture of her daughter, called out religious leaders who have used their beliefs to block the legislation from passing.

“When a human being is actively dying, suffering, they need and want informed medical choices. They need options,” she says. “Whether or not we as individuals would seek aid in dying should not affect our ability to accept that other Californians might wish to receive aid in dying.”

The new legislation will likely have its first hearing, before the Special Committee on Health, the week of Aug. 24. It then has to make it through the Special Fiscal Committee before it goes to the full Assembly floor, where it would need 41 votes to pass.

Even then, Gov. Jerry Brown could opt to not sign it. His spokeswoman tells the Los Angeles Times that legislation of this magnitude shouldn’t be addressed in extraordinary session. But it’s long past time the legislature dealt with this issue, and give Californians, a majority of whom back medical aid in dying, what they’re asking for.

As Jennifer Glass so aptly put it in her writing, endings matter.

MARY DUAN is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at mary@mcweekly.com