Pritzker signs ‘medical aid in dying’ bill amid religious opposition

CHICAGO, Ill. (Capitol News Illinois) — Gov. JB Pritzker signed a law Friday that will allow terminally ill adults in Illinois to take life-ending medication prescribed by physicians.

The controversial bill overcame strong opposition from religious groups and some disability rights advocates who feared it could endanger Illinoisians with disabilities.

Critics call the practice “assisted suicide,” while those who support the law say it is not suicide, but rather an option that can bring comfort and dignity to already dying people.

“I have been deeply impacted by the stories of Illinoisans or their loved ones that have suffered from a devastating terminal illness, and I have been moved by their dedication to standing up for freedom and choice at the end of life in the midst of personal heartbreak,” Pritzker said in a news release announcing his decision to sign the bill.

The Illinois law will take effect beginning in September of 2026.

Groups like the Catholic Conference of Illinois called on the governor to veto the bill and, as an alternative, “expand and improve on palliative care programs that offer expert assessment and management of pain and other symptoms.”

“Many lawmakers chose to ignore the real advances in palliative medical care as an alternative to assisted suicide,” the Catholic Conference of Illinois said in a statement when the bill passed in October. “These programs support caregivers and help ensure patient care is coordinated with other services. And they represent a compassionate and morally acceptable alternative to assisted suicide.”

Illinois becomes the 13th U.S. jurisdiction to authorize the end-of-life option, joining Oregon, Montana, Vermont, California, the District of Columbia and others. Delaware passed a bill authorizing medical aid in dying earlier this year.

State legislators in New York passed a similar bill this June, which requires a signature from Gov. Kathy Hochul by the end of the year before it can become law.

If New York’s bill is passed, over 85 million adults representing approximately 25% of the U.S. population will live in states that have authorized medical aid in dying.

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Compassion & Choices, an organization dedicated to expanding options for end-of-life care, said they plan to push for medical aid in dying legislation next year in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Maryland, Virginia and Florida, most of which introduced the legislation this year.

The organization’s goal is for 50% of all Americans to live in states where medical aid in dying is authorized by 2028, according to its website.

Eligibility and limitations

The Illinois law, Senate Bill 1950, applies to terminally ill Illinois adults with a prognosis of less than 6 months to live, as confirmed by two independent physicians. Major depressive disorder is not alone a qualifying condition for receiving end-of-life medication, and patients must be physically able to self-administer the medication.

A patient requesting the medication must pass a mental evaluation by a physician to confirm that they are mentally capable of making the decision and not facing undue influence. Patients must make requests both verbally and in writing, and physicians are required to inform them of alternate hospice care and pain control options.

Read more: Lawmakers weigh whether to legalize ‘medical aid in dying’ | ‘Medical aid in dying’ bill moves forward in Illinois | Legislature passes ‘medical aid in dying’ bill that governor says he will review

The bill includes protections for physicians such that they cannot be found civilly or criminally liable or face professional discipline for prescribing or refusing to prescribe the medication.

Disability rights, religious concerns

Disability rights groups like the Chicago-based Access Living oppose medical aid in dying, which they fear could worsen already existing disparities in medical treatment for those with disabilities.

They worry that physician bias in perceived quality of life may make physicians more inclined to encourage life-ending treatment over other options for people with disabilities.

“You can’t know for sure if your doctor is going to give you the best possible recommendation, because maybe your doctor actually has a disability problem,” Access Living Advocacy Director Amber Smock recently told Chicago Tonight. “How can you count on that really being healthcare?”

The evidence from other states where the treatment is legal has not demonstrated that, according to researchers and disability advocates in those states. Oregon was the first U.S. state to legalize medical aid in dying, and its law has been continuously in effect since 1994.

In 2019, Bob Joondeph, then-executive director of Disability Rights Oregon, penned a letter stating that in the 25 years of Oregon’s history with the legislation, the disability advocacy organization had not received a single complaint about a person with disabilities being coerced to utilize end-of-life medication.

Rather, he said that the complaints received centered on a lack of access to the treatment for those with disabilities.

“All of the complaints we have received have focused on the concern that the Act might discriminate against persons with disabilities who would seek to make use of the Act but have disabilities that would prevent self-administration, thereby denying these persons the ability to use the Act,” Joondeph wrote.

Elissa Kozlov, an assistant professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health, studies medical aid in dying legislation and trends.

“People always raise concerns about coercion or abuse, but we just aren’t seeing that in the data,” Kozlov recently told Chicago Magazine. “No horror stories have emerged.”

Karen Retzer comes from a family line of medical aid in dying advocacy; both her parents were supporters of the option in Michigan since the 1990s. Retzer, a resident of Champaign, began organizing around the issue in 2016 with other members of her Unitarian Universalist church. That group was later folded into Compassion & Choices.

Retzer became a stronger advocate after her mother died in 2012 from pulmonary fibrosis, a progressive lung disease where lung tissue becomes scarred and causes difficulty breathing.

In response to opposition on religious grounds, Retzer said she thinks medical aid in dying should be a personal choice. Those who don’t want the option can simply opt not to take it, she said.

“When I saw my mother really suffering at the end, I thought, ‘Wow, you know, this could have been easier.’ We all knew she was dying, right?” Retzer said in an interview. “Providing comfort to somebody, if they want to, seems to me to be the moral thing to do.”

Just having the option makes a difference, Retzer added, even if people don’t use it.

“When you’re terminally ill, retaining some autonomy at the end of life can bring peace and forgo a lot of extra suffering,” Retzer said. “Thinking back to my mother, it would have been a very compassionate thing to do.”

(Reporting by Maggie Dougherty, Capitol News Illinois)

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

This article first appeared on Capitol News Illinois and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.