A Catholic bishop, a Lutheran nursing home and four physicians have filed a federal lawsuit challenging Illinois’ new assisted-suicide law, arguing that its requirements violate their religious convictions and professional duties by compelling them to facilitate practices they consider morally unacceptable.
Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, joined the Lutheran Care Center and four Illinois doctors in bringing the lawsuit in U.S. District Court, according to EWTN News. The plaintiffs are challenging provisions of the state’s “End-of-Life Options” law that they say require conscientious objectors to take part in facilitating assisted suicide.
According to EWTN News’ account of the complaint, the law requires objecting physicians to participate in the process of helping patients obtain assisted suicide. The lawsuit also contends that health care entities must communicate the law’s “benefits” to patients and permit practitioners at their facilities to facilitate access to assisted suicide.
The plaintiffs maintain that these requirements conflict directly with their religious and professional commitments. The lawsuit says the doctors and the Lutheran nursing facility “[cannot] in good conscience comply” with the law.
For Paprocki, the dispute also concerns his responsibilities as a Catholic bishop. According to EWTN News, the lawsuit says he is obligated to uphold the U.S. bishops’ directives governing Catholic health care, which prohibit Catholic health facilities from participating in assisted suicide.
In a press release issued by the Thomas More Society, which represents the plaintiffs, Paprocki said the purpose of Catholic health care is to advance “the healing work of Christ” and “affirm the God-given dignity of every human life.”
The bishop said Illinois’ law “undermines that mission by forcing Catholic hospitals and those who serve in them to push death onto their most vulnerable patients.”
“We must be free to serve the sick and the dying according to our faith, not according to the state’s mandate,” Paprocki added, according to the Thomas More Society.
Dr. Mary Keen, one of the physicians participating in the lawsuit, likewise framed her objection in terms of both her medical vocation and Catholic faith.
According to the Thomas More Society statement cited by EWTN News, Keen said the requirement that doctors facilitate assisted suicide “violates everything I know as a health care professional, as well as my deeply held Catholic convictions on the dignity of every human life.”
“As a doctor, I have a responsibility to meet my patients’ existential pain with loving accompaniment, not with abandonment,” she said.
The Illinois case comes amid another legal challenge involving Catholic institutions and assisted suicide. In July, Bishop John Barres of the Diocese of Rockville Centre and four communities of religious sisters filed suit against New York’s assisted-suicide law, according to EWTN News.
New York subsequently agreed that the sisters would not be required to participate in the assisted-suicide program while their case proceeds, EWTN News reported. The New York law went into effect Aug. 5.
The Illinois lawsuit places questions of religious liberty and conscience protections at the center of the continuing debate over assisted suicide. For the Catholic plaintiffs, the issue is not merely whether they may personally decline to perform an act they consider immoral, but whether the state may require Catholic health care institutions and professionals to facilitate access to that act despite their religious objections.
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