Sen. Michael Merrifield’s father wished to climb his favorite mountain, sit under a tree near Clear Creek and die peacefully on his own terms.

Instead Merrifield, a Democrat from Colorado Springs, retold the excruciating pain that his father, Kenneth Merrifield, lived through in the final months of his battle with prostate cancer before he died in 2001. Merrifield recounted the story in detail as he explained to members of a Senate committee Wednesday why he is sponsoring a bill making it legal for Colorado doctors to prescribe life-ending drugs to terminally ill patients.

“I watched him panting for breath,” Merrifield said, stopping to regain his composure. “Then I told him, I whispered in his ear, that it was OK to go and about five minutes later he died. I determined then that if I ever had the opportunity to give people the chance to determine how they die, that I would do so.”

Merrifield’s personal story was one of dozens told during the Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee hearing on Senate Bill 25. People with terminal illnesses talked about their desire to chose when and how they go. Family members of patients who died slow painful deaths, mostly from cancer, described their loved-one’s pleading for a more-merciful death. The testimony for the bill lasted for several hours.

But so did the testimony against the bill, which included a number of medical doctors opposing the legislation.

Michael Norton talked about how his son died at age 21 of leukemia but that he knew his son wanted to fight to the very end.

Norton is president of the Colorado Freedom Institute, a Denver-based non-profit that advocates for religious freedoms.

“People that are most vulnerable, the disabled and terminally ill, are the ones most in need of protection,” Norton said. “This is a slippery slope.”

Norton testified against a similar bill that was unsuccessful last year.

He said Merrifield’s bill doesn’t require the same reporting that the bill in 2015 did and is “worse.”

“It’s a slippery slope and the threat of abuse is beyond the pale.”

The bill was defeated by three Republicans on the five-person committee: Senators Owen Hill, Ray Scott and Jerry Sonneneberg who all said they couldn’t support the bill. A similar bill that was introduced in the House of Representatives will get a hearing tomorrow.

The Colorado End-of-life Options Act would have put strict controls in place for when a doctor could prescribe fatal drugs.

The patient would have to have a terminal illness and be determined by two physicians to be “capable of making an informed decision.” The patient would have to request the drugs twice verbally and once in writing and be capable of administering the drug themselves. Only Colorado residents would be eligible. Physicians would be immune from civil and criminal liability if they act in good faith by prescribing the drug.

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Michael Merrifield’s experience with the death of his own father is a major motivator in his sponsorship of right-to-die legislation. KEVIN KRECK, THE GAZETTE FILE

Kevin Kreck