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Gov. J.B. Pritzker, D-Ill., signed into law Friday a bill that would allow doctors in Illinois to prescribe the deaths of their own patients.
Under the new law, which goes into effect in September 2026, terminally ill people above the age of 18 will be able to get a suicide drug from their doctor, making Illinois the 12th state in the country to allow assisted suicide.
Those 12 include Washington, Oregon, and California.
Has our conscience become so seared that we no longer honor the sanctity of life?
My life, my choice?
Have we so normalized killing unwanted, unborn babies in the name of choice, that we now can passionately convince the sick and the elderly to take the death pill and save their family and the state all the money they are spending on keeping a sick, and or aging family member alive?
Apparently.
Be informed, not misled.
State-sanctioned euthanasia not only pressures patients to choose suicide, but also inevitably ends in health care systems forcing suicide on patients.
More on that in a moment.
State-sanctioned suicide and the mass murder of infants through abortion are probably the clearest signs that a society is sick, and Pritzker has only made the carnage easier in his state during his tenure. Illinois Democrats rammed through the bill, according to the Chicago Sun Times, barely passing both legislative bodies despite a Democrat supermajority. At the same time, Republicans rightly pointed out it was ushering in a “culture of death.”
The Sun Times says Pritzer claims that "Civil liberties advocates hailed Illinois’ law" and will be "thoughtfully implemented so that physicians can consult patients on making deeply personal decisions with authority, autonomy, and empathy,” according to Pritzker.
State Sen. Linda Holmes believes, "Legalized assisted suicide has proliferated largely because the decline of Christianity in the United States has made people incapable of properly understanding human suffering and death, as evidenced by Democrat bill sponsor, state Sen. Linda Holmes, who said the measure was inspired by her parents’ battles with cancer."
She said, “I’ll never forget the helpless feeling of watching them suffer when there was nothing I could do to help them,” she said. “I believe every adult patient of sound mind should have this as one more option in their end-of-life care in the event their suffering becomes unbearable.”
In other words, she would rather have had her parents kill themselves.
The measure narrowly passed the Illinois House in May and surprised Springfield observers, including Pritzker, when it got a Senate vote in the waning hours of the veto session, squeaking through with a bare-minimum 30-27 majority Oct. 31.
It faced resistance within the supermajority Democratic caucus and staunch opposition from Republicans who were calling it a new “culture of death.”
“When my mother passed at home, I know she would have chosen this path to ease our pain, not her own. That’s exactly why strong safeguards matter,” House Minority Leader Tony McCombie, R-Savanna, said in a statement. “I opposed this legislation because compassion must be paired with caution.”
But is our compassion paired with caution enough? It's still killing the sick and the elderly.
The Chicago Sun-Times says:
Opponents at Access Living, which advocates for people with disabilities, had pushed the governor to veto legislation they warn could lead to abuse.
“Legalizing physician-assisted suicide in Illinois will place our community at the risk of the subtle but dangerous pressure to end our lives rather than get the care we need,” Access Living president Karen Tamley said in a statement last month.
Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich blasted the law as well, saying Pritzker has “put Illinois on a dangerous and heartbreaking path — one that legitimizes suicide as a valid solution for life’s challenges.
“Rather than investing in real end-of-life support such as palliative and hospice care, pain management, and family-centered accompaniment, our state has chosen to normalize killing oneself. This law ignores the very real failures in access to quality care that drive vulnerable people to despair. It does nothing to ensure patients are offered services, protected from coercion or surrounded by loved ones when they kill themselves,” Cupich said in a statement.
Breccan Thies writes in The Federalist, “I have been deeply impacted by the stories of Illinoisans or their loved ones that have suffered from a devastating terminal illness, and I have been moved by their dedication to standing up for freedom and choice at the end of life in the midst of personal heartbreak, said Pritzker."
In order to be eligible to request the suicide drugs, an adult patient must have been diagnosed by two physicians and given a prognosis that he has six months or less to live. The patient will also have to make multiple oral and written requests with witnesses. The bill does not allow guardians, surrogates, preemptive legal documents, or other proxies to suffice.
Doctors will also be required to attest that the patient is “of sound mind” and talk to him about other options like palliative care and hospice.
As Americans have come to expect from abortion laws, those bare-minimum safeguards are sure to be whittled away until people can order suicide drugs through the mail, just like abortion pills. That is particularly likely with the American Civil Liberties Union, a radical leftist organization that supported the bill, being involved.
Takeaway
The Heritage Foundation published an in-depth article about this subject a few years ago. It was written by Ryan T. Anderson. It takes about an hour to read the full report.
This is a summary:
"Allowing physician-assisted suicide would be a grave mistake for four reasons. First, it would endanger the weak and vulnerable. Second, it would corrupt the practice of medicine and the doctor–patient relationship. Third, it would compromise the family and intergenerational commitments. And fourth, it would betray human dignity and equality before the law. Instead of helping people to kill themselves, we should offer them appropriate medical care and human presence. We should respond to suffering with true compassion and solidarity. Doctors should help their patients to die a dignified death of natural causes, not assist in killing. Physicians are always to care, never to kill."
These are the three main parts of the article:
- Physician-Assisted Suicide endangers the weak and vulnerable and corrupts the practice of medicine and the doctor–patient relationship.
- Physician-assisted suicide will create perverse incentives for insurance providers and the financing of health care.
- The most profound injustice of PAS is that it violates human dignity and denies equality before the law.
God is God. We are not.
The Hippocratic Oath proclaims: “I will keep [the sick] from harm and injustice. I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect.” This is an essential precept for a flourishing civil society. No one, especially a doctor, should be permitted to kill intentionally, or assist in killing intentionally, an innocent neighbor.
Human life need not be extended by every medical means possible, but a person should never be intentionally killed. Doctors may help their patients to die a dignified death from natural causes, but they should not kill their patients or help them to kill themselves. This is the reality that such euphemisms as “death with dignity” and “aid in dying” seek to conceal.
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Engaged. Be Pro-Life. Be Prayerful. Be Careful.
