Illinois legalizes assisted suicide, despite outcry from bishops, pro-life advocates

(OSV News) — Illinois has become the 12th state, along with the District of Columbia, to legalize assisted suicide, amid outcry among the state’s Catholic bishops and other pro-life and disability advocates.

On Dec. 12, Gov. JB Pritzker signed SB 1950 into law, allowing terminally ill adults who are Illinois residents to end their lives through self-administered lethal drugs prescribed by a physician.

Terminal illness is defined in the law — which takes effect in September 2026 — as “an incurable and irreversible disease that will, within reasonable medical judgment, result in death within 6 months.” Major depressive disorder alone “does not qualify” as a terminal disease, the law states.

The terminal diagnosis must be confirmed after an in-person evaluation by a physician, with a second physician concurring.

Physicians must inform patients of “feasible alternatives” to assisted suicide, including treatment options; palliative, comfort and hospice care; and pain control. Written and oral requests from the patient alone are required in order to receive lethal drugs for ending one’s life.

Health care professionals are not required to participate in the process; those that do are not subject to civil or criminal liability.

In a statement issued Dec. 12, Pritzker said the law’s approval would allow “patients faced with debilitating terminal illnesses to make a decision, in consultation with a doctor, that helps them avoid unnecessary pain and suffering at the end of their lives.”

Pritzker’s approval of the measure comes after a number of efforts to prevent the bill from becoming law.

Illinois Catholic bishops oppose assisted suicide bill

On Dec. 10, the Illinois Catholic bishops sent a letter to Pritzker, urging him to veto the bill, and to instead ensure the state’s residents have “compassionate, loving care provided by trained professionals and/or loving family members” at the end of their lives.

The following night, dozens of the measure’s opponents braved the damp chill to hold a vigil outside the governor’s downtown Chicago office. Doctors and advocates for persons with disabilities spoke out against the bill, pleading that Pritzker veto it.

In November, Access Living, a Chicago-based disability advocacy organization, condemned the bill’s passage, warning that its clients — mostly persons of color with low income, who rely on Medicaid and other services — “will endure the brunt of this harmful legislation.”

“Illinois’ bill does not offer freedom; it harms people with disabilities,” the group said in a Nov. 3 statement.

Specifically, said Access Living president and CEO Karen Tamley in the statement, the law “sets a dangerous precedent” for Illinois residents with disabilities, “particularly in the same moment we are experiencing cuts to Medicaid and access to healthcare.”

Tamley said that “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.” 

Bishops: “Real compassion demands” ensuring access to hospice and palliative care

In their letter to Pritzker, the bishops said the legislation “is not about compassion.”

While the law specifies that a patient be informed of alternatives to directly ending their lives, the bishops stressed that the law itself “requires no services to be offered to the person requesting death.”

In addition, they said, “there is no requirement that family be near the loved one at the point of death, or that the person is not being coerced into ending their life.

“This has already dangerously played out in other states with these laws in place. This is not compassion,” said the bishops.

They called for expanded access to properly funded “quality hospice and palliative care,” lack of access to which can lead “many to seek to end their lives.”

“Real compassion demands we invest in and ensure access to excellent pain management and holistic support for the terminally ill, allowing them to live their final days in comfort and peace, surrounded by family, friends and other emotional supports,” the bishops said.

Bishops: Concern for increased suicide in Illinois

They also predicted that the law “will also lead to more suicide in Illinois,” citing research by scholar David Paton of Nottingham University that detected a “significant increase” in total suicide where it has been legalized.

“It defies common sense for our state to enact a 9-8-8 suicide hotline, increase funding for suicide prevention programs, and then pass a law that, based on the experience of other jurisdictions, results in more suicide,” said the bishops.

The law stands to increase what is sometimes called “suicide tourism,” which sees individuals travel to destinations where suicide is legal in order to end their lives.

“Other states eventually eliminated their state residency requirement, thus opening assisted suicide to anyone in the world,” the bishops noted.

Saying they “believe within a few short years, the alleged safeguards will no longer exist,” they asked, “What stops someone who just wants to stop living from accessing medical assistance to do so?”

The bishops pointed to Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying, or MAID, program. Since the program’s enactment in 2016, a total of 76,475 individuals have ended their lives, according to an annual report published in November by the Canadian government.

In the U.S., 5,239 patients died through assisted suicide during the period 1998-2020, with the median age of death 74, according to a 2022 analysis by researchers at Rutgers Unversity, Lehigh University and The Hastings Center.

Concerns for healthcare workers’ conscience rights in Illinois

During the Dec. 11 vigil, Robert Gilligan, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Illinois, said that in the nine months until the law takes effect, his office would be combing through the text — including its provision on conscience rights for health care workers.

“We feel that this bill, as it’s currently written, would require a physician in a certain situation to refer somebody who requests assisted suicide, and we feel that the existing protections in the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act are not adequately represented in this bill, so we’re going to look at that,” said Gilligan, who also hinted at “possible litigation” to challenge the law.

Chicago Auxiliary Bishop Mark A. Bartosic — who works with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, and who also attended the vigil — lamented “the sneakiness” of the circumstances surrounding SB 1950, which included an uncertain and largely unpublicized signing date. 

Bishop Bartosic also echoed objections of Republican lawmakers such as State Rep. Bill Hauter, a physician, who objected to a lack of transparency in the bill’s process. Hauter also noted the bill violates the physician’s oath to “do no harm.”

The American Medical Association’s code of ethics states that “physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks.”

Catholic teaching on end of life

Catholic teaching states that “intentional euthanasia, whatever its forms or motives, is murder” (Catechism, 2324).

The teaching of the Catholic Church is quite specific, with the Second Vatican Council condemning “euthanasia or wilful self-destruction” among the moral “infamies” that “poison human society” and are a “supreme dishonor to the Creator.”

However, the church also says it can be morally acceptable for people to forgo “extraordinary” medical treatment.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church notes that “discontinuing medical procedures that are burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary, or disproportionate to the expected outcome can be legitimate; it is the refusal of ‘over-zealous’ treatment. Here one does not will to cause death; one’s inability to impede it is merely accepted” (Catechism, 2278)

Gina Christian is a multimedia reporter for OSV News. Follow her on X @GinaJesseReina. Simone Orendain is an OSV News correspondent who writes for OSV News from Chicago.

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