(LifeSiteNews) — Another federal judge has blocked Illinois from forcing nuns to participate in assisted suicide, as Catholic leaders continue to demand that the law be struck down entirely.
As covered last November by LifeSiteNews, standalone euthanasia legislation failed to make it through either Democrat-controlled chamber of the state legislature earlier in the year, but activists had greater success smuggling it into an unrelated bill on food sanitary preparation rules. The amendment states that so-called “Medical aid in dying is part of general medical care and complements other end-of-life options, such as comfort care, pain control, palliative care, and hospice care.”
Democrat Gov. JB Pritzker signed the bill the next month, defying a direct appeal from Pope Leo XIV. The law requires someone who wishes to undergo euthanasia to make the request to end his or her life both verbally and in writing, then repeat it verbally at least five days after the initial request. Multiple Illinois health systems have since declared that they will refuse to participate.
Last month, the Thomas More Society announced that it was representing the Diocese of Springfield’s Bishop Thomas John Paprocki, the Lutheran Care Center, and four Catholic physicians in a lawsuit maintaining that the law “threaten[s] the integrity of religious healthcare institutions’ identity and mission by requiring them to allow their own employees to promote assisted suicide on premises, and to assist in patient suicides off-site” without discipline or termination; and that because the law “decrees that its procedures ‘do not constitute suicide [or] assisted suicide,’ a vaguely worded and overtly viewpoint-based ban on ‘misinformation to obstruct access’” would imperil “any health care facility that calls assisted suicide what it is and distinguishes it from legitimate health care.”
On September 3, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago along with nuns from the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm and the Little Sisters of the Poor brought another lawsuit, and, on September 11, U.S. District Judge Franklin Valderrama issued a temporary restraining order against the policy, noting that the parties had stipulated to it “pending the issuance of the mandate in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision in NIFLA v. Treto and Schroeder v. Treto,” which concern an Illinois law forcing pro-life organizations to make referrals for and provide information about abortion services, “and this Court’s subsequent ruling on Plaintiffs’ expected motion for preliminary injunction.” The parties are to reconvene to schedule proceedings on the next steps within seven days of the Seventh Circuit’s ruling.
Carmelite Mother Mary Rose Heery expressed gratitude that the temporary order “brings real peace of mind to our Sisters, our residents, and their families” and “allows us to continue our vocation of showing Christ’s unbounded love to those who need it most – a love that endures in every circumstance and through every hardship.”
Assisted suicide is currently legal in 14 states plus the District of Columbia, with legalization measures pending in a dozen more.
As Patients Rights Action Fund (PRAF) executive director Matt Vallière has argued, current euthanasia programs in the United States constitute discrimination against patients with life-threatening conditions in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, as when a state will “will pay for every instance of assisted suicide” but not palliative care, “I don’t call that autonomy, I call that eugenics.”
Live Action’s Bridget Sielicki further notes that “because a paralytic is involved, a person can look peaceful, while they actually drown to death in their own bodily secretions. Experimental assisted suicide drugs have led to the ‘burning of patients’ mouths and throats, causing some to scream in pain.’ Furthermore, a study in the medical journal Anaesthesia found that a third of patients took up to 30 hours to die after ingesting assisted suicide drugs, while four percent took seven days to die.”