Catholic Health-Care Providers Sue Illinois over Physician-Assisted Suicide Law

Catholics are taking a stand against Illinois’s soon-to-be-enacted assisted suicide law, filing a suit against the state Thursday in defense of their religious rights under the First Amendment.

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Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, the Little Sisters of the Poor, and pharmacist Luke Vander Bleek joined together to file the suit, arguing the state’s End-of-Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act — which is set to become law on September 12 — conflicts with their religious liberty because it forces religious physicians and health care providers to participate in the assisted-suicide process.

“The Gospel calls us to uphold the inviolable dignity and worth of the human person, from life’s first moment to its natural end,” Cupich said in a statement. “As Catholics, we oppose efforts to undermine human dignity by pushing our brothers and sisters toward suicide. We pray that the courts will protect our freedom to continue advocating and caring for the sick and dying as our faith demands.”

The plaintiffs characterize the law as imposing a “Suicide Counseling Mandate,” arguing that it requires physicians who receive a patient’s request for assisted suicide to provide information about the practice, regardless of the physician’s moral convictions.

Health care providers will “have to participate throughout the multi-step process of qualifying their patients to receive lethal suicide drugs. Pharmacists will also have to participate by filling prescriptions they know will be used for suicide,” the suit explains.

While the Illinois law includes an “opt-out” clause, the suit argues it is not enough to protect religious or morally-convicted health care providers from participating in assisted suicide, as they are still required to “directly participate in and materially assist the same medicalized suicides to which they object” through, for example, referrals to other health care providers that are willing to facilitate the assisted suicide.

“Illinois also threatens religious caregivers for speaking a life-affirming message against suicide, imposing a gag order on their care. EOLOA’s definition of coercion and undue influence is so broad that it risks punishing the Sisters and other healthcare providers in the Archdiocese simply for telling a suffering patient, ‘Don’t kill yourself. Jesus loves you. Your life is precious,’” the Becket Fund, who is representing the plaintiffs in the case, wrote in its press release.

This is the most recent suit filed on behalf of Catholics, arguing a state’s assisted suicide law conflicts with their religious liberty.

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In New York, the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne and a coalition of 12 other Catholic health-care groups filed a similar case to stop their state’s law from going into effect at the beginning of last month.

New York’s Medical Aid in Dying Act allows patients with less than six months to live to request assisted suicide drugs. Paired with another state law, the Palliative Care Information Act, health-care providers are required to inform patients of their end-of-life options — including assisted suicide — their case argues.

Earlier this summer, the Thomas More Society filed a suit on behalf of different Illinois religious groups: Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki, four Catholic doctors, and Lutheran Care Center. At the end of August, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order on the law, protecting those plaintiffs from enforcement of certain provisions of the law. The move, however, only protects the plaintiffs in the initial case. The newly filed lawsuit seeks similar protection for Cupich, the Catholic religious orders, and Vander Bleek.

According to the state, the law was passed to provide “an additional end-of-life care option for terminally ill individuals who seek to retain their autonomy and some level of control over the progression of the disease as they near the end of life or to ease unnecessary pain and suffering.” But, according to the suit, it forces both religious providers and their patients to engage with assisted suicide, when the patients ostensibly sought out Catholic care in order to avoid that coercion.

“Our residents come to us at one of the most vulnerable moments of their lives,” Mother Mary Rose Heery, prioress general of the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, said in a statement. “Our vocation is to give witness to them, through everything we do, that their lives remain precious and that they will never be abandoned. Illinois cannot ask us to replace that promise with help ending their lives.” 

Democratic Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed the law last year, making Illinois the first Midwest state to codify the practice, and the 13th U.S. jurisdiction.

If the law goes into effect, patients with a terminal illness and a prognosis of six months or less can request medication to end their lives; two physicians must confirm the diagnosis and prognosis. If either physician questions the patient’s mental capacity, a mental health evaluation is required. If the patient is deemed to have mental capacity, the patient must self-administer the medication, and the death certificate will reflect the terminal illness rather than suicide.

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