Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich
CHICAGO — Chicago's Catholic Cardinal Blase Cupich has leant his office's heft to the effort to block a new Illinois law that would force doctors, regardless of their religious beliefs or conscientious objections, to help certain patients commit suicide.
On Sept. 3, Cupich, together with two orders of Catholic nuns who operate elder care facilities, and a Catholic pharmacist, filed suit in Chicago federal court seeking a court order declaring Illinois' new law creating a pathway for medically assisted suicide violates the constitutional rights of Catholics involved in health care and elder care.
“The Gospel calls us to uphold the inviolable dignity and worth of the human person, from life’s first moment to its natural end," Cupich said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.
"As Catholics, we oppose efforts to undermine human dignity by pushing our brothers and sisters toward suicide. We pray that the courts will protect our freedom to continue advocating and caring for the sick and dying as our faith demands.”
Cardinal Cupich and his co-plaintiffs, including the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm and the Chicago Province of the Little Sisters of the Poor, are represented in the action by attorneys from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, of Washington, D.C.
“The state should stop trying to make Catholic nuns help patients kill themselves," said Mark Rienzi, president of Becket. "It is awful for Illinois to be forcing every sick and dying person within its borders to hear its message of suicide at their lowest moment — regardless of whether they want it or not.
"Patients deserve the freedom to seek healing, hope, and accompaniment without the government forcing suicide into the conversation. The Constitution protects that freedom.”
The filing comes as the latest legal challenge to Illinois' so-called End of Life Options Act (EOLOA.)
Two lawsuits have already been lodged in federal court seeking to block the state from enforcing the law.
In one of the lawsuits, downstate Bishop Thomas Paprocki, of the Diocese of Springfield, has already secured a temporary restraining order, preventing Illinois officials from forcing Catholic hospitals and doctors to refer certain patients for medically assisted suicide, at least until the judge in that case rules on the plaintiffs' request for a preliminary injunction blocking the law.
That motion, however, will also remain on hold until a federal appeals court in Chicago resolves related legal questions concerning the authority of the state to force Christian doctors and other medical professionals, as well as hospitals run by religious organizations, such as Catholic hospitals, to refer patients for abortions.
It is not known when the the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals may rule in that case, known as Schroeder v Treto.
The challenges from the Catholic clerics and religious orders and health care organizations and practitioners center on claims that the law would force religious adherents to violate their Christian beliefs concerning the sanctity of life and prohibition on suicide, in violation of the First Amendment's protections for religious freedom.
But in a third case, a group of people with disabilities and disability advocacy organizations challenged the law for allegedly creating a "duty to die" for those with disabilities.
In that case, the plaintiffs argue the state law must be struck down because the law will upend longstanding legal protections for people with disabilities and will create a new regime that would grant state permission for doctors, insurers and other "private actors" to pressure those with severe disabilities to die early as a cost- and labor-saving measure.
Further, they argue the law will encourage discrimination in the state's suicide prevention efforts, by establishing a "two-track system" for suicide prevention under which suicide prevention for those with disabilities will be weighed against their quality of life considerations. Essentially, they said the system would generally seek to prevent suicide for most people, but for those with "life-threatening disabilities" it would seek instead to "facilitate their deaths."
The state of Illinois has responded to that lawsuit in court. In opposing the plaintiffs' motion for preliminary injunction, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul argued the law includes safeguards to prevent the EOLOA law from being used to coerce those with disabilities to prematurely end their lives.
The EOLOA law was passed by the state's Democratic governing supermajority over Republican opposition this spring. It was signed by Democrat Gov. JB Pritzker.
The law is scheduled to take effect Sept. 12.
Supporters of the law, including Pritzker, have said the law is needed to provide people with terminal illnesses with "the option to seek medication to peacefully end their lives on their own terms in consultation with physicians."
When he signed the bill into law, Pritzker said the law would enable "patients faced with debilitating terminal illnesses to make a decision, in consultation with a doctor, that helps them avoid unnecessary pain and suffering at the end of their lives."
The state has noted in court that the law only opens medical assisted suicide options to those with terminal diagnoses of no more than six months to live. Further, they asserted, the law doesn't allow anyone other than the patient to decide whether to move forward with the assisted suicide. And, the state asserted, the law requires that the patient undergoing the assisted suicide must be capable of administering the lethal drugs themselves.
However, the religious challengers all assert those limits won't prevent the law from violating the First Amendment religious freedom and conscience rights of Catholics and other Christian doctors, health care and elder care providers, and patients.
In the Sept. 3 lawsuit, Cardinal Cupich and his co-plaintiffs said: "The many Illinois nurse practitioners, doctors, mental health professionals, pharmacists, hospitals, and care homes with religious or moral objections to participating in assisted suicide will have nowhere to go, because Illinois’ purported 'opt-out' still requires religious care providers like the Carmelite Sisters and the Little Sisters to directly participate in and materially assist the same medicalized suicides to which they object.
"The Catholic patients who do not want to be offered the chance to kill themselves at their lowest moment will be left out in the cold.
"None of this is permitted by the Constitution," they said.
Cupich, the nuns and pharmacist Luke Vander Bleek, of Fitzgerald Pharmacy, of Morrison, are also seeking a restraining order and injunction blocking the law, in addition to court orders declaring the EOLOA law unconstitutional.
The state has not yet responded in court to the new complaint.
