(The following is a statement from the Diocese of Springfield)
A dark day for Illinois. With Governor Pritzker signing physician assisted suicide into law, Illinois has stepped onto a dangerous and heartbreaking path—one that replaces compassion with a lethal drug.
Instead of investing in real end-of-life support like palliative care, hospice, pain management, and family-centered accompaniment, our state has chosen to normalize the idea that a person can kill themself.
This law ignores the very real failures in access to quality care that drive vulnerable people to despair in the first place. It does nothing to ensure that patients are offered services, protected from coercion from others, or are surrounded by loved ones when they kill themselves.
In states where similar laws exist, we’ve already seen the consequences: insurance companies denying treatment but approving cheap, lethal drugs, families left out of last moments, and safeguards slowly stripped away. That is not compassion. It is abandonment.
Even more alarming, this law undermines every effort Illinois has made to combat suicide. Studies show that legalizing assisted suicide increases total suicides.
How can we urge teens and young adults—already facing the second-leading cause of death in their age group—not to choose death, while our own laws say that suicide can be a “medical option?” How can we fund suicide prevention hotlines, expand suicide prevention programs, and train communities, while simultaneously signaling that some lives are too burdensome or too expensive to save?
Governor Pritzker and legislators who supported this legislation had a choice to build a future where every person, especially the sick and vulnerable, is cared for with dignity, love, and support—or to open the door to a system where death becomes a cost-saving alternative.
With SB 1950 now law, we must speak even louder that true compassion means helping people live, not helping them die.
