IL State Senators need to hear from us right now!
Agents of death are lobbying and tallying votes in hopes
that they can push through a bill to legalize
physician-assisted suicide in the Lame Duck Session (Jan. 2-8).

The Illinois General Assembly continues to consider legalization to enact physician-assisted suicide (PAS) in our state. This despite opposition from a growing number of groups such as those that advocate for the disabled, the Catholic Conference of Illinois, the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, the Christian Medical and Dental Association, the Assembly of God Churches, the American Medical Association, and the American Psychiatric Association.

Even the left-leaning Chicago Tribune and Sun Times editors published op-eds urging a “no vote” on this legislation.

The truth is, there is no public demand to expand healthcare to include death care. The more we learn about the ways this green light to end human life is being abused in nations like Canada and states like California, the more opposition grows.

If allowed, vulnerable people who are sick, elderly, disabled, and those with mental illness and dementia will become targets of coercion, not compassion.

As the father of a Downs Syndrome toddler, I am extremely alarmed by this proposal. There are growing concerns among disabled individuals about being pressured into considering physician-assisted suicide due to insufficient healthcare coverage or social support.

No one should be comfortable with promoting a cheaper, easier alternative to life’s struggles, one that also happens to make it possible to ignore our responsibility to love and support our neighbors – especially when they are among “the least of these.”

Canada’s law, with 79 percent support, was promoted as a last resort for the terminally ill. Support has now plummeted to 30 percent because of the resulting disregard for vulnerable citizens such as the chronically (not terminally) ill and those who are disabled.

Canadians facing homelessness and poverty are also feeling pressure to end their lives rather than be a “burden” to society.

In 2023, 21 years after physician-assisted suicide was legalized there, 76.2 percent of Belgium’s euthanasia was administered to people with physical and psychological issues, including personality disorders, depression, and Alzheimer’s.

A Netherlands law that took effect on February 1, 2024, allows parents to euthanize their children even if the child doesn’t want to be killed.

In the United Kingdom in 1994, The House of Lords Select Committee on Medical Ethics concluded:

“It was virtually impossible to ensure that all acts of euthanasia were truly voluntary and that any liberalization of the law in the United Kingdom could not be abused. We were also concerned that vulnerable people – the elderly, lonely, sick or distressed – would feel pressure, whether real or imagined, to request early death.”

Sadly, it looks as if the prevailing voices in the UK have abandoned their prior principles on the issue, as a majority of parliament recently voted in favor of “assisted dying.”

Do we think this insidious creep toward doing away with “inconvenient” people would be different in Illinois? Experience tells us it would not.

Our laws should protect all citizens of Illinois, especially the most vulnerable. A law that would inevitably be used to compel the disabled, the depressed, or other vulnerable people to embrace assisted suicide to relieve a burden on society —real or perceived—is wicked and immoral.

Proponents want to slap a “death with dignity” label on it, but it is cruel and heartless to disregard the sanctity of human life for selfish and temporal reasons.

In a Heritage Foundation report about PAS, Ryan T. Anderson, PhD, rightly points out:

Doctors should help their patients die a dignified natural death, but doctors should not assist in killing or self-killing. Physicians are always to care, never to kill.

Physician-assisted suicide endangers the weak and marginalized in society. Where PAS has been allowed, safeguards that were put in place to minimize this risk have proved inadequate and over time have been weakened or eliminated altogether.

Dr. Anderson ends his report by stating:

The most profound injustice of PAS is that it violates human dignity and denies equality before the law. Every human being has intrinsic dignity and is the subject of immeasurable worth. No natural right to PAS exists, and arguments for such a right are incoherent. A legal system that sought to vindicate a right to assisted suicide would jeopardize the real natural right to life for all of its citizens.

For all of these reasons, citizens and policymakers need to resist the push for physician-assisted suicide.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your state senator now. Ask him/her to vigorously oppose SB 3499. Below are some points that should be made to our lawmakers as they wrestle with this issue. Feel free to pick and choose whichever point(s) you find most helpful:

• Illinois is a state that has long prided itself on offering top-quality healthcare. And assisted suicide is NOT healthcare, no matter what they call it.

• Public policy should seek to improve healthcare and protect the vulnerable, not hasten death.

• Allowing medical professionals to prescribe lethal drugs damages trust in the doctor-patient relationship.

• Assisted suicide targets people who most need our assistance and compassion by treating their lives as undignified and expendable: those in pain, with disabilities, the mentally ill, the elderly, persons of color, and low-income individuals.

• Experience with assisted suicide in places where it is legal shows it to be risky, lacking in safeguards, and going far beyond its weak parameters.

• Society has a longstanding policy of preventing suicide through many public and private suicide prevention programs, the benefits of which could be eradicated under a public policy of physician-assisted suicide.

• Palliative care is a proven way to relieve pain, provide comfort, and offer comprehensive and individualized treatment that encompasses all aspects of care—physical, emotional, practical, and spiritual.

• Assisted suicide will harden many hearts. Empathy and compassion will diminish.

• Unfortunately, the only ones who benefit from assisted suicide are the insurance companies. Ending life is a much cheaper alternative to long-term care.

Physician-assisted suicide is now legal in Oregon, Washington, Vermont, Maine, Hawaii, California, Colorado, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia.

The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy.
I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
~The Lord Jesus Christ (John 10:10)~