Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker Signs Bill to Legalize Assisted Suicide

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has signed a dangerous bill to legalize assisted suicide that will put elderly and disabled people at risk.

introduces significant risks to vulnerable populations, including individuals with serious illnesses, disabilities and those facing financial hardship.

“Every patient deserves compassionate care and a full spectrum of options to live with dignity,” the Patients Rights Action Fund asserted. “The passage of SB 1950 introducing the use of lethal drugs in Illinois compromises that fundamental right.”

The bill’s history underscores the contentious debate: A prior attempt to legalize assisted suicide stalled in June when proponents attached similar language to a food safety measure that passed the House but failed in the Senate. If signed into law, Illinois would join a handful of states permitting the deadly practice, a development pro-life leaders warn erodes protections for the elderly, disabled and mentally ill while diverting resources from true palliative care.

The Thomas More Society, an Illinois pro-life legal group, condemned the signing, calling the law legalizing physician-assisted suicide “a tragic and dangerous turning point for the moral and constitutional landscape of our state” that puts the elderly, disabled, and vulnerable at risk.

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“This is a dark and sorrowful day for Illinois. When the state signals that some lives are no longer worth living, the most vulnerable pay the price,” said Thomas Olp, Executive Vice President at Thomas More Society. “Instead of offering true compassion, support, and care, this law offers a fatal prescription. That is not mercy. It is abandonment.”

“By legalizing physician-assisted suicide, the Land of Lincoln has crossed a profound moral and legal red line. As signed into law, this fatal misstep places vulnerable lives at risk, tramples the inherent dignity of human life, and erodes the foundational conscience rights of medical professionals and religious medical practices.”

In addition to its grave social and moral implications, the just-signed law threatens the conscience rights physicians opposed to facilitating assisted suicide, as well as the freedom of association of religious medical institutions. SB 1950 requires physicians who object to assisted suicide on moral or religious grounds to refer patients to providers who will participate in ending their lives.

“The State is forcing doctors to become active participants and cooperators in a patient’s suicide—no matter if their faith, ethics, or Hippocratic Oath forbid it,” Olp emphasized. “This is unconscionable coercion, plain and simple. No doctor should be ordered by the government to participate directly or indirectly in a process that deliberately ends a human life.”

Beyond the law’s compelled-referral mandate, the law, as passed by the General Assembly, would also force religious hospitals and clinics to retain staff who promote assisted deaths on-site, as long as those staff provide lethal drugs off-site. “This is a Trojan horse designed to violate and undermine the missions of religious healthcare institutions. Gov. Pritzker’s assisted suicide law threatens the integrity of Catholic and Christian medical institutions statewide.”

“We will defend the right of every healthcare professional to practice medicine consistent with their conscience and oath, and we will fight any state effort to force religious healthcare institutions to violate their beliefs,”Olp added.

“State law should never endorse the idea that suffering or sickness makes a life disposable,” Olp continued. “We urge Illinoisans, people of faith, dedicated medical professionals, and all who cherish human life, to stand with us in fighting to defend the vulnerable and protect fundamental freedoms.”