MONTPELIER -- Roger Secker Walker, a retired physician with cancer, wants the comfort of knowing he has the option of physician-assisted death if the disease spreads into his bones and makes his life unbearable.

Edward Case of Westford believes only God can determine his life span and says hospice provided excellent care and pain relief to family members when they were dying.

In a packed House chamber Tuesday, Vermonters had the chance to weigh in on a bill that would allow physicians to hasten the death of terminally ill patients. The public hearing was visually divided between those who see the procedure as a blessing and wore green stickers and those who see it as a curse, donning yellow stickers.

Past hearings on what some call "death with dignity" and "patient-directed dying" and others call "assisted suicide" have drawn big crowds, so the state Senate's Committee on Health and Welfare scheduled the 6:30 p.m. public hearing in the state House of Representatives chambers.

Peter Carlough of Burlington, one of 70 people signed up to testify, said the question before legislators was whether Vermont wants to give doctors the right to kill. "Do we really want to enable them to break this solemn oath?" he said of the Hippocratic oath not to harm.

Retired surgeon Dr. Richard Austin of Shelburne planned to challenge the religious and legal arguments against the bill, particularly that doctors would be violating that oath.

For Austin, who said he has seen people die miserable deaths, palliative care might be enough for most dying patients, but not for all. "And I'm fighting for those few," he said before the hearing.

"Life is precious, but not when you're under great stress and pain or on a respirator," he said.

The bill would make Vermont the second state in the country to allow someone who is terminally ill and has a prognosis of six months or less to live to ask a physician for a prescription that would end his life. The patient would need two doctors to agree, and would have to undergo counseling.

The bill would also require that the medication be administered by the patient, not the doctor.

Supporters said the options in the bill would be used by only a small number of Vermonters, based on the fraction of people who have died in Oregon through a similar law in the past nine years.

Opponents said they were not in favor of the state's allowing a procedure that they believe is suicide.

Vermont should not be known as the "D" state where death by suicide is sanctioned and permitted," said the Rev. Jay Haskin of Colchester.