Within the first week of the new session of Illinois' General Assembly lawmakers on Jan. 13 and 14 filed bills to set their state on a path to becoming the 12th jurisdiction in the United States to have a physician-assisted suicide law.
Ten states, including the District of Columbia, have legalized physician-assisted suicide. Along with Illinois, 17 other states have lawmakers proposing similar legislation.
The two identical bills submitted in the Illinois Senate and House called "End-of-Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act" call for two doctors to ascertain that a patient has six months or less to live, and to evaluate the patient's mental faculties and ability to self-administer the lethal drugs.
The proposed law, however, stops short of authorizing physician-assisted euthanasia, where the physician administers the medication prescribed to kill the patient.
In physician-assisted suicide, a physician prescribes lethal medication but the patient administers it.
However, the legislation states that the patient's death under the act cannot be described as either suicide or murder. In fact, it states the actions described in the proposed act "do not, for any purposes, constitute suicide, assisted suicide, euthanasia, mercy killing, homicide, murder, manslaughter, elder abuse or neglect, or any other civil or criminal violation under the law."
It also specifies the cause of death for the death certificate would be the original diagnosis of the patient -- not that they took prescribed lethal drugs to kill themselves.
Catholic bioethicist John Haas said the ancient Hippocratic oath in its original form, which doctors traditionally have taken, involves a physician swearing not to give any poison -- or counsel for it -- to the sick.
"It's broader than just a Christian teaching," said Haas, the immediate past president of the Philadelphia-based National Catholic Bioethics Center, or NCBC. "It's a humane teaching that we don't kill those who are suffering. We help them. We work on curing them and healing them. And if that doesn't work, we comfort them when they're in their last days."
The Catholic Conference of Illinois is opposing the assisted suicide legislation, advocating the state instead advance moral alternatives when it comes to end-of-life care.
"The answer is palliative care," said Robert Gilligan, the conference's executive director. He referred to health care focused solely on giving comfort and managing symptoms such as pain that cause suffering for someone with a serious or terminal illness.
"Fund more of that. Expand more of that. This is the way out of this," he said.
Gilligan also said another pressing concern is "suicide contagion."
"In other words, once a state says it's okay to end your life, more people will do that," he said.
The conference is trying to help lawmakers understand this risk.
But Sen. Linda Holmes, D-Aurora, the bill's lead sponsor in the state Senate, said she was hopeful about the bill's passage.
"I talked to my Senate members and we know ... it polls at over 70% of the population (who) think it should be an option," Holmes said.
According to a 2024 Gallup poll, 66% of Americans favor physician-assisted suicide "when a person has a disease that cannot be cured and is living in severe pain." Another 71% supported physician-assisted euthanasia "if the patient and his or her family request it."
Holmes, 65, who said she is Catholic but not practicing, shared that her father's death, when she was a teenager, was part of why she became passionate about the bill after being approached by Compassion and Choices. The group lobbies to legalize physician-assisted suicide as "medical aid in dying."
"My father died of lung cancer when he was 49. And I mean, it's a horrendous way to watch somebody die. I mean, it's horrible. It's painful. There's a lot of suffering," she said.
But Gilligan, along with other Catholic bioethicists, pointed out that when states or countries enact assisted suicide laws, they almost always expand them and relax the initial criteria to cover a greater number of people.
Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, a senior ethicist at NCBC, said Oregon, Vermont, Washington state and Hawaii have all liberalized their laws beyond their initial restrictions. Lawmakers have pushed similar efforts in California and New Jersey.
Father Pacholczyk said that the Catholic Church can help people think through and see that the arguments for such laws are fundamentally flawed. But he also said the church has teaching that helps people bear through deep difficulties.
He noted that for Catholics, "hope is the inseparable companion of suffering."
"Jesus endured the Cross, which was fruitful, precious and redemptive. But no one can support just the cross alone," he said. "Suffering, accompanied by the warming reality of hope, offers us strength in the recognition that our earthly pains will indeed pass, and yield to eternal joys."
He said, "This remarkable combination of hope and suffering unchains the human spirit. Such hope is central to the life of every follower of Christ."
