Illinois’s assisted suicide law took effect on September 12. But, Dr. Mary Keen Kirchoff and the other doctors and ministries we represent are protected from its coercive, anti-conscience mandates by a federal court order that our Thomas More Society attorneys won last month.
That court order shields four physicians, the Lutheran Care Center, and the Most Rev. Thomas Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield.
Since then, we’ve taken another critical step.
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Our legal team has filed a major new 99-page amended complaint, adding five religious health care association clients to the case to broaden the blanket of protection in Illinois:
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- The Illinois Catholic Health Association
- The Christian Medical & Dental Associations
- The Catholic Medical Association
- The National Association of Catholic Nurses
- The Catholic Psychotherapy Association
Joining them are Dr. William Crevier, a physician, and Carol Crevier, who will soon begin practicing as an advanced practice registered nurse.
Here’s why this all matters so much…
The Illinois Catholic Health Association’s members include more than 95 percent of the Catholic health institutions in Illinois. The four national associations count more than 13,000 physicians, dentists, nurses, and mental health professionals among their members—all of whom object to this law on grounds of conscience.
We are now asking the court to extend the protection our original clients won to our new pro-life clients and the members they represent in Illinois.
Consider what the Land of Lincoln’s assisted suicide law demands of them…
- Doctors must tell patients about the so-called “benefits” of committing suicide, even patients who never asked.
- A doctor who refuses to prescribe lethal drugs must still, “at a minimum,” refer his or her patients to another doctor who will help them kill themselves.
- And when a patient dies this way, the law requires a falsified death certificate that attributes the death to the underlying illness and conceals how the patient actually died.
There’s more: Catholic hospitals may refuse to provide the lethal suicide drugs, but the law forbids these religious institutions from stopping their own staff from promoting assisted suicide on hospital grounds or providing actual suicide “services” off-site!
If a rogue employee does so, the hospital, nursing home, or other ministry cannot discipline them in any way for it!
Because the law—in Orwellian fashion—declares that assisted suicide does not “for any purposes” constitute “suicide,” a nurse or counselor who tells a patient the plain truth risks being disciplined for spreading “misinformation.”
Dr. William Crevier, our new physician client, eloquently captures the moral gravity of what Illinois has done: “Legislation like this robs patients of confidence in their caregivers, converting everyone with an RN, MD, NP, or PA license into a potential ‘death-guide,’ rather than a servant of God, the giver of life.”
Our legal team is able to fight for the sanctity of life in this battle and so many others.
LifeNews Note: Tom Brejcha is the President and Chief Counsel of Thomas More Society.
