Pritzker Indicators Legislation Welcoming State-Sanctioned Suicide To Illinois

Gov. J.B. Pritzker, D-Ill., signed into law Friday a bill that would allow doctors in Illinois to prescribe the deaths of their own patients.

Under the new law, which goes into effect in September 2026, terminally ill people above the age of 18 will be able to get a suicide drug from their doctor, making Illinois the 12th state in the country to allow assisted suicide.

State-sanctioned suicide and the mass murder of infants through abortion are probably the clearest signs that a society is sick, and Pritzker has only made the carnage easier in his state during his tenure. Illinois Democrats rammed through the bill, barely passing both legislative bodies despite a Democrat supermajority, while Republicans rightly pointed out it was ushering in a “culture of death.”

Legalized assisted suicide has proliferated largely because the decline of Christianity in the United States has made people incapable of properly understanding human suffering and death, as evidenced by Democrat bill sponsor, state Sen. Linda Holmes, who said the measure was inspired by her parents’ battles with cancer.

“I’ll never forget the helpless feeling of watching them suffer when there was nothing I could do to help them,” she said. “I believe every adult patient of sound mind should have this as one more option in their end-of-life care in the event their suffering becomes unbearable.”

In other words, she would have rather had her parents kill themselves.

Though proponents of assisted suicide often place the emphasis on the suffering of the patient, Holmes’ statement implies that the suffering of bystanders can also be a factor in the deadly choice, raising the very real potential that outside pressure may drive an individual to choose assisted suicide.

Republican House Minority Leader Tony McCombie, who opposed the legislation, observed, “When my mother passed at home, I know she would have chosen this path to ease our pain, not her own.”

Access Living, a group that opposed the bill, made a similar point, with organization President Karen Tamley stating, “Legalizing physician-assisted suicide in Illinois will place our community at the risk of the subtle but dangerous pressure to end our lives rather than get the care we need.”

Pritzker’s statement also makes it clear that support for letting people kill themselves is often about soothing the infant minds of family members, not the terminally ill people themselves.

“I have been deeply impacted by the stories of Illinoisans or their loved ones that have suffered from a devastating terminal illness, and I have been moved by their dedication to standing up for freedom and choice at the end of life in the midst of personal heartbreak,” said Pritzker.

In order to be eligible to request the suicide drugs, an adult patient must have been diagnosed by two physicians and given a prognosis that he has six months or less to live. The patient will also have to make multiple oral and written requests with witnesses. The bill does not allow guardians, surrogates, preemptive legal documents, or other proxies to suffice.

Doctors will also be required to attest that the patient is “of sound mind” and talk to him about other options like palliative care and hospice.

As Americans have come to expect from abortion laws, those bare-minimum safeguards are sure to be whittled away until people can order suicide drugs through the mail, just like abortion pills. That is particularly likely with the American Civil Liberties Union, a radical leftist organization that supported the bill, being involved.

According to the Chicago Sun Times, “Health care providers aren’t required to participate” in the administration of the deadly drug.

Pritzker’s signing of the bill comes only weeks after he met with Pope Leo XIV, who is from Illinois. The Illinois Democrat said he mentioned the issue to the Pope, “acknowledging that there may be things that we disagree about.” Pritzker is Jewish.

The Illinois Catholic Conference issued a statement on Oct. 31 stating that “rather than signing this bill, we ask the governor to expand and improve on palliative care programs.” The conference added that these programs “represent a compassionate and morally acceptable alternative to assisted suicide.”

The suicide measure, which was opposed by numerous religious groups, passed the state Senate on Halloween, and Pritzker signed it on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Before the bill signing, the Catholic Conference and Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich urged Pritzker “not only to veto this bill in totality, but also to address humanely the reasons why some view assisted suicide as their only option.”

“It defies common sense for our state to enact a 9-8-8 suicide hotline, increase funding for suicide prevention programs and then pass a law that, based on the experience of other jurisdictions, results in more suicide,” they said.

State-sanctioned euthanasia not only pressures patients to choose suicide, but also inevitably ends in health care systems forcing suicide on patients. Canada has already been trying to kill as many of its own people through its “medical assistance in death” (MAID) system, where doctors have allegedly been pushing suicide on unwilling, disabled patients, as The Federalist reported.

But patients with chronic illnesses that are treatable are also condemned to death under the system, as in the case of Canadian woman Jolene Van Alstine, who has suffered for years with a painful but treatable condition.

Because her province doesn’t have a surgeon who could conduct the surgery, and no endocrinologist would give Van Alstine a referral to seek the surgery elsewhere in Canada, the best answer Canadian officials could give was suicide.

Blaze Media CEO Glenn Beck offered to pay for her to come to the United States to get the surgery.

Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.