Dear Friends,
On September 12, less than a month away, Illinois’ medical aid-in-dying law (commonly referred to as assisted suicide) will be in force.
While Governor JB Pritzker signed the “End of Life Options” Act into law on December 12, the delay until September was built-in to give the Illinois Department of Public Health and health care providers time to establish the required processes and safeguards.
Just a few days ago, Bishop Paprocki, the Lutheran Care Center, and four Illinois physicians sued the State of Illinois over this unjust law. The Thomas More Society filed the complaint on their behalf, asking a federal court to block the law before it takes effect on September 12.
As you you know, this law is frought with problems. Not only does the law violate the natural and moral law when it allows and promotes suicide, it also requires faithful medical professionals to help facilitate patient suicides in violation of the Hippocratic Oath, centuries of legal and medical tradition, and their deeply held religious convictions.
Dr. Mary Keen, one of the four doctors in the suit, explains the impossible situation the State has put her and many other doctors in: “The State’s demand that physicians begin helping patients accomplish assisted suicide violates everything I know as a health care professional, as well as my deeply held Catholic convictions on the dignity of every human life. As a doctor, I have a responsibility to meet my patients’ existential pain with loving accompaniment, not with abandonment.”
Not only does this travesty strike at the vocation of the physician, it attacks the foundation of Catholic and religiously based healthcare.
“At the heart of the Catholic Church’s healthcare ministry is the healing work of Christ—to stand with the suffering, to comfort the dying, and to affirm the God-given dignity of every human life,” said Bishop Paprocki. “Illinois’s assisted suicide law undermines that mission by forcing Catholic hospitals and those who serve in them to push death onto their most vulnerable patients. We must be free to serve the sick and the dying according to our faith, not according to the state’s mandate.”
While not a pleasant subject to discuss, in the coming weeks I will devote the pastor’s column to the topic of assisted suicide and why the Catholic Church opposes it.
With gratitude and joy for the days ahead!
Fr. Seth