Governor Jerry Brown has just signed a measure making California the fifth state in the country to legalize physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients. A former Jesuit seminary student, Gov. Brown openly voiced conflicting feelings over the bill, but claims he ultimately does not want to deny people the right to end of life options. As a pro-choice liberal with a background working in hospice, most people I know assume I am enthusiastic about the passing of this measure, but the truth is that it gives me pause.

When I was 25 years old my father asked me to help him die. We were standing in his bedroom and he was in the mechanical hospital bed the hospice team had installed. I had just finished brushing his dentures, and they were still drying in my hand, when he proposed the idea that I compile all of his pain meds and help him ingest them. I placed the dentures gently on the swiveling table at his bedside and told him I needed to think about it.

I’ve worked in hospice and I watched both of my parents die — and I’m still ambivalent about California’s new law