CNA Staff, Jun 3, 2025 /
16:20 pm
A bill to legalize physician-assisted suicide in Illinois was not called for a vote in the Senate before the Legislature adjourned on June 1, effectively halting its progress for the session amid ardent opposition from leading Catholic voices in the state.
The bill, which passed in the House at the end of May, would have made it legal for physicians to give “qualified” terminally ill patients life-ending drugs. As the bill failed to move through the General Assembly, physican-asisted suicide remains criminal in Illinois.
Physician-assisted suicide, called medical aid in dying or “MAID” by proponents, is legal in 10 states as well as the nation’s capital. Oregon was the first to legalize the practice in 1994, though an injunction delayed its implementation until 1997.
Under the proposed Illinois legislation, death certificates would show the terminal illness as the cause of death, not suicide.
The bill was included as part of legislation originally intended to address food and sanitation.
Cardinal Blase Cupich, archbishop of Chicago, criticized the bill in a May 30 statement.
“I speak to this topic not only as a religious leader but also as one who has seen a parent die from a debilitating illness,” Cupich said, recalling his father’s death.
Cupich urged Illinois to promote “compassionate care,” not assisted suicide.
“My father was kept comfortable and was cherished until his natural death,” he said.
Cupich noted that Catholic teaching supports palliative care (a form of care that focuses on improving quality of life, including pain management, for patients with terminal illnesses) “so long as the goal is not to end life.”
“There is a way to both honor the dignity of human life and provide compassionate care to those experiencing life-ending illness,” Cupich said. “Surely the Illinois Legislature should explore those options before making suicide one of the avenues available to the ill and distressed.”
State Rep. Adam Niemerg, a Catholic legislator who opposed the bill when it was on the floor in the House, said the practice “does not respect the Gospel.”
Niemerg urged Illinois legislators to vote against the bill, saying: “We must protect the vulnerable, support the suffering, and uphold the dignity of every human life.”
“It tells the sick, the elderly, the disabled, and the vulnerable that their lives are no longer worth living — that when they face this despair, the best we can offer is a prescription for death,” he said of assisted suicide. “That is not compassion, that is abandonment.”
Niemerg also raised concerns that the law “opens the door to real abuse.”
“We’ve seen where this becomes practice, the patients are denied lifesaving treatment and offered lethal drugs instead,” he said.
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Mental health concerns
In his statement, Cupich questioned the move “to normalize suicide as a solution to life’s challenges” amid a culture already contending with a mental health crisis.
Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for U.S. teens and young adults, Cupich noted, citing a 2022 study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
He urged politicians to consider “the impact on impressionable young people of legalizing suicide in any form.”
“Suicide contagion is a real risk to these young people after exposure to suicide,” he continued, citing the National Institutes of Health.
“Add to that the ready availability of firearms in the U.S., and this is a tragedy we do not need to compound,” he said.
Cupich also raised concerns about suicide rates increasing if assisted suicide legislation were implemented.
“While the bill sets parameters for assisted suicide, the data from places where assisted suicide is available are clear,” Cupich said. “Rates of all suicide went up after the passage of such legislation.”
“These rates are already unacceptably high, and proposed cutbacks in medical care funding will add to the burden faced by those contemplating suicide,” Cupich said.
Kate Quiñones is a staff writer for Catholic News Agency and a fellow of the College Fix. She has been published by the Wall Street Journal, the Denver Catholic Register, and CatholicVote, and she graduated from Hillsdale College. She lives in Colorado with her husband.
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