Kathy Hochul and JB Pritzker are Both Sitting on Bills to Legalize Assisted Suicide

Two Democrat Governors—Illinois’ JB Pritzker and New York’s Kathy Hochul—face enormously important decision. Each has a bill on their desk which, if signed, will add to the roster of 11 states which allow assisted suicide.

Hochul has had months to decide—the House and Senate passed the “Medical Aid in Dying Act” in April and June, respectively—and opponents of assisted suicide hope and pray the long delay means that in the end she will veto S.138/A.136.

Proponents have pushed passage for years and years, proving yet again that pro-lifers can never rest.

In Illinois, advocates simply did not honorably squeeze through the “End-of-Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act.” Barbara Lyons, Special Projects Coordinator, Patients Rights Action Fund, explained what happened:

In a surprise move in the early hours of Friday morning [October 31], the Illinois State Senate quietly took up and passed a bill to legalize assisted suicide, by a one vote margin. SB 1950 came up on the floor after 2 am during a veto session, with Senators voting 30-27 (with two not voting). The House passed SB 1950 in the spring, so the bill now goes to Governor Pritzker.  

You may recall that the House vote came after proponents gutted an unrelated food safety bill, which had previously passed the Senate, and replaced the language with the assisted suicide legislation. 

Now the fate of SB 1950 is in the hands of Gov. Pritzker. After making the case for both sides, The Chicago Tribune editorialized against signing the bill.

One of the most persuasive arguments against medically assisted death, in our view, came from advocates who spoke on behalf of people with disabilities. We also took particular note of a Harvard study that surveyed doctors and found that 82.4% of those physicians believed that “people with significant disability have worse quality of life than non-disabled people.” The study also found that only 40.7% of physicians were “very confident” in their ability to provide equal quality care to patients with disabilities. Those advocating for this community view these results as worrying, questioning whether some in the medical community have an inherent bias against their constituency. We say that’s a fair concern.

The editorial went on

We also found it troubling that so many seriously ill people may pursue such a path for fear of becoming a financial burden to their family. Their worry is understandable, but we believe you can’t put a price tag on every moment you get with your loved ones.

“Pritzker should veto ‘right to die’ bill passed in the veto session” highlighted how assisted suicide is the slippery slope on steroids. “Strict” legislation passed in Canada in 2023 “accounted for 1 in 20 deaths in Canada” —while in the Netherlands, a “28-year-old woman with depression, autism and a personality disorder, shared with The Free Press her plans to pursue euthanasia because she was ‘tired of living.’” At age 29, she made good on her awful commitment.

As of Tuesday, neither Hochul nor Pritzker has signaled whether they would sign their assisted suicide bills.

LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. He frequently writes Today’s News and Views — an online opinion column on pro-life issues.