Cardinal Blase Cupich of the Chicago Archdiocese, the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, the Little Sisters of the Poor Chicago Province, and a downstate pharmacist are among plaintiffs in a sweeping lawsuit challenging the new Illinois End-of-Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act (EOLOA).
The suit names three state officials as defendants: Sameer Vohra, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health; Mario Treto Jr., secretary of the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation; and Terry Prince, director of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs.
This law does not resemble Canada's Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) law, which has gone off the rails and now allows psychologically disturbed people to request death. But this law has a "slippery slope" written all over it.
"The Illinois law lets a terminally ill patient — someone given up to six months to live by a doctor — request and ingest life-ending prescription medication," reports the Chicago Tribune. "Its passage and the governor’s signature capped a yearslong debate at the state Capitol over whether Illinois would allow the practice."
“At the very least, Illinois ought to heed federal law, which bans the use of federal healthcare funds for assisted suicide, and forbids Illinois from discriminating against those who, like the Sisters, refuse to participate in assisted suicide,” the plaintiffs said in the suit. “Instead, Illinois has put the Sisters and other Catholics providing health care in the Archdiocese to a stark choice: either abandon their religious beliefs regarding the sanctity of life or face significant fines and penalties.”
Not so, say the ghouls at the ACLU.
“Medical aid in dying is voluntary for health care professionals, health care entities and terminally ill Illinoisans. The law does not force anyone to provide or choose this end-of-life option; no one is required to provide the care; it provides only that people be informed of their options (and when applicable) respect a patient’s request to transfer care without undue delay,” ACLU spokesperson Edwin Yohnka said in a statement Thursday. “Instead of recognizing that reality, the lawsuit seeks to impose the values of the plaintiffs on all Illinoisans — without any recognition or understanding for the desires and life circumstances of someone facing a terminal diagnosis."
The ACLU says that the law will not "force anyone to provide or choose this end-of-life option." Instead, it will force nuns and other religious people to inform a patient of the option to end their lives. The ACLU and most liberals can't understand that the very act of giving patients the option to kill themselves places the soul of a devout Catholic in peril.
They don't want a "workaround," as Obama famously tried to give the Little Sisters of the Poor on the abortion issue. You can't "work around" your strongly held beliefs.
The suit argues the law conflicts with a state statute prohibiting “offering to help someone commit suicide,” and cites case law barring the use of federal funds for end-of-life options. It also points to studies it says show suicide rates rise overall in states that legalize medical aid in dying, particularly among older adults, and contends veterans are especially at risk. The suit notes that the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs and the state Department of Public Health work with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs on suicide-prevention training and other mental health services.
“By passing EOLOA (the End of Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act) and giving the state Department of (Veterans) Affairs authority to regulate under the new law, Illinois has taken a drastically different tack, and attempted to force unwilling providers to participate,” the lawsuit alleges. “Illinois now requires health care providers to counsel their terminally ill patients about assisted suicide — even when those patients are already at a high risk of suicide because of their veteran status.”
"Plaintiffs’ lawyers are asking the court to declare the law — along with its interaction with the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act, which shields healthcare professionals from liability for refusing treatment on religious grounds — unconstitutional, reports the Tribune. "They are also seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary and permanent injunctions to block enforcement."
Pope Leo took the extraordinary step of calling Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker last year at the height of the debate over EOLOA. Leo said he was "very disappointed" to learn that Pritzker had signed the measure into law.
The suit also invokes the First Amendment’s “protected sphere of church autonomy,” which it says bars government from concerning itself with the governance of religious institutions, “such as how the Catholic Church chooses to implement its beliefs on the sanctity of human life and the decision of religious communities to form themselves around those same principles.” It argues that restricting a fundamental religious-freedom protection is constitutional only if the state is furthering “an interest of the highest order” through “the least restrictive means” — a standard the suit contends the defendants cannot meet — and that protections against compelled speech bar the government from forcing Catholic doctors and nurses to speak positively about end-of-life options.
The suit also cites freedom-of-association protections, which it says “allow the Catholic Church, its various communities, and the patients they serve, to organize themselves into (like-minded) communities with the same values and beliefs — the mission of which is to live faithfully according to those beliefs, for however long or short a time.”
As with Canada's MAiD act, there's plenty of room to amend the bill to make it far more onerous on providers and remove some of the restrictions on what exactly constitutes a "terminal illness."
Under the law, an eligible patient — at least 18 and an Illinois resident — may orally request a prescription from their attending physician, a request that must be documented. The patient must then submit a written request, witnessed by two people who attest, “to the best of their knowledge,” that the patient is acting voluntarily and is mentally sound; the law lists limits on who may serve as a witness.
A second oral request must follow five days after the first. When the patient makes that second request, the attending physician must offer the patient a chance to rescind it and must provide “sufficient information” about all appropriate end-of-life care options, including comfort care, hospice care, palliative care and pain control, along with the foreseeable risks and benefits of each.
They're greasing the slope already.
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