Illinois Backs Down From Forcing Doctors to Promote Assisted Suicide

On September 12, Illinois was set to require Dr. Mary Keen Kirchoff to tell her patients about the so-called “benefits” of ending their own lives, and to sign a death certificate afterward that conceals how they died.

On Friday, the State agreed to stand down—for now.

Thomas More Society filed suit on August 11. Ten days later, U.S. District Judge Franklin U. Valderrama entered a stipulated order temporarily barring Illinois from enforcing its new “End of Life Options” Act against Dr. Keen Kirchoff, three fellow physicians, the Lutheran Care Center, and the Catholic hospitals under the authority of the Most Reverend Thomas J. Paprocki, Bishop of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois.

You made this possible, Steven.

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Recall what the State wanted from these doctors and ministries—and what it can no longer demand of them as of Friday. Come September 12, the law would have forced them to:

• Tell patients about the so-called “benefits” of ending their own lives, including patients who never raised the subject
• Refer a patient to someone willing to prescribe lethal drugs
• Record those requests in a way that starts the state’s suicide “qualification” process
• Keep quiet about whatever the state decides is “misinformation” about suicide
• Falsify a death certificate to conceal how a patient died

The penalty for refusal: fines of up to $10,000 per violation, the loss of a medical license, and even potential criminal prosecution.

Dr. Keen Kirchoff has spent over four decades caring for the most vulnerable with what she describes as “loving accompaniment, not abandonment.” Friday’s order means she can keep doing just that.

“This means I can go back to focusing on caring for my patients instead of wondering whether staying true to who I am is going to cost me my career,” she says. “For months I’ve faced the real possibility that I could lose my license, be fined, or even face criminal charges simply for refusing to promote or refer patients toward death.”

This order is great news. But its protection reaches only so far.

Friday’s order covers the plaintiffs we represent and the Catholic health care ministries in Bishop Paprocki’s diocese. It lasts until the district court rules on our next motion, and that ruling awaits a decision in Schroeder v. Treto, our separate challenge to Illinois’s Health Care Right of Conscience Act now before the Seventh Circuit and raising similar issues.

Meanwhile, September 12 still arrives for everyone else. Every other doctor in Illinois—and every other health care ministry—still faces this mandate’s impossible demands.

We will not rest until this mandate is struck down for good, and until every doctor and every health care ministry in Illinois is free to heal without fear.

No physician should have to choose between her license and her conscience. No state should be permitted to force this impossible choice on her.

With your help, we’ll keep fighting so that faithful health care providers won’t be forced to compromise their religious beliefs.