At 2:55 a.m. on the morning of Halloween, the Illinois Senate cast a final vote on a food safety bill that had been retrofitted to serve as physician-assisted suicide legislation. The bill passed with the bare minimum number of votes required and—after a years-long legislative battle—will make its way to the governor’s desk for a signature before 2026.
The bill reads like physician-assisted suicide legislation in most other parts of the country plus Canada, so most of our concerns are derived from the lived experiences of those who’ve been harmed by such laws. Specifically, it allows qualified terminally-ill individuals to receive an “aid in dying” prescription from a physician in order to “die peacefully.” While the bill claims to address many of the concerns that have arisen in other states (such as inadequate mental health assessments and inappropriate disposal of unused lethal drugs), we know the truth: Any bill that allows a vulnerable individual to legally solicit the help of a licensed physician in his own suicide is an inherently flawed one.
I remember discussions surrounding this legislation as early as seven years ago. My organization, Illinois Right to Life, knew it was only a matter of time before it would be introduced in the general assembly. We began working closely with Patients’ Rights Action Fund, a 501(c)4 organization, to raise awareness among legislators about how such laws could coerce disabled and chronically-ill individuals into choosing death out of concern for burdening their families.
For years, our efforts were successful. Even some of the most pro-abortion Democratic lawmakers expressed doubts over the legislation, particularly in light of the many real-life examples of abuses that have occurred in states like Washington and Oregon, where legal suicide first debuted in the United States.
As recently as October 15—two weeks before the final vote was held—our lobbyists were confident that pro-suicide Democrats did not have the votes needed to pass this legislation. Nevertheless, we remained vigilant. After a successful campaign to oppose it during the spring session, we launched the fall veto session (a two-week stint of meetings and votes for legislators before the end of the year) with emails to activists across the state, urging them to reach out to their legislators once again and remind them to oppose this bill.
Clearly, something changed.
As is characteristic of Illinois Democrats when they want to see an unpopular bill become law, the vote was called in the middle of the night on the very last day of the session. It scraped by with the exact number of “yeas” needed to pass.
While we hope that the governor will withhold his signature, the pro-life people of our state are mourning yet another loss in our legislature. It’s a reminder of the evil that pervades our government—not only through corruption and fiscal irresponsibility (which our state is unfortunately known for), but also through the cruel failure to protect our society’s most vulnerable.
The significance of passing such legislation on All Hallows’ Eve cannot be overstated. While Halloween has become a secular tradition over time, historically, the eve of All Saints’ Day was a solemn evening of prayer—a memento mori opportunity, if you will—to remember the faithful who came before us and contemplate the inevitability of death.
Certainly, death is inevitable—but it is also the will of God that the timing of such remain outside our grasp. It’s a tough argument to make, especially in a culture that does not tolerate religious arguments in the public square and values individualism and “choice” above all else. Even Christians sometimes support physician-assisted suicide when confronted by deep suffering and appeals to compassion. According to those who promote it, to “die with dignity” is to avoid the humiliations that coincide with death and impart suffering on loved ones. Why not avoid humiliation, when death is all but certain?
Fr. Walter Ciszek, who famously documented his own decades-long suffering as a missionary in a Russian gulag, offers a profound case for enduring humiliation, which Christ transforms into glory:
It is only natural to resent humiliation. We recoil from humiliating experiences because they are an affront to the dignity of our persons—which is another way of saying that our pride is hurt. That is the key to the problem, and it is then that we do well to recall who we really are and who God is. If we see nothing beyond the experience except the hurt and the unpleasantness, it can only be because we have lost sight, for the moment at least, of God’s will and of His providence. For humiliations arise out of circumstances, situations, and people that God presents to us each day—and all these are but a manifestation of His providence. So, we must learn to discern in such things, even in the humiliations, occasions for a deeper conformity to the will of God. Christ had to suffer opposition and contradiction and, yes, humiliation in doing His Father’s will; yet he was constantly intent on forgetting self entirely and glorifying the Father by His actions. If we are truly to imitate Christ in our lives, we must learn to do the same.
In other words, “dying with dignity” is a euphemism. To choose one’s death is to deny one’s dignity, to deny redemptive suffering and the protection of providence. “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him” (Rom. 8:28). Any arguments in favor of ending a vulnerable human life will always contradict the dignity of the human person, who is made in the image of God.
Let us remember, as we celebrate the Octave of All Souls over these coming days, these additional words by Fr. Ciszek: “Just as all men share in the disobedience of Adam, so all men must share in the obedience of Christ to the Father’s will. . . . It is not the Father, not God, who inflicts suffering upon us but rather the unredeemed world in which we must labor to do His will, the world in whose redemption we must share.”
