Illinois will soon allow terminally ill adults to seek prescriptions for life-ending medicine.
Gov. JB Pritzker signed a Senate Bill 1950, also known as Deb’s law, Friday making Illinois the eleventh state to allow terminally ill patients to end their lives with physician-prescribed medicine.
A group of active Oak Parkers make up the nation’s largest chapter of the Compassion & Choices organization which has lobbied intensely for passage of this controversial legislation.
Oak Park is home to notable core support for bringing end of life care legislation to Illinois.
Oak Park resident Tiffany Johnson owns We Too Shall Pass, where she works a “death doula” advocating for dying people and their families. She’s also helped lead a chapter of Compassion & Choices, a political advocacy group that’s campaigned for bringing the legislation to Illinois.
“This Oak Park team is the largest End of Life Options team not only in Illinois, but in the entire country, and you brought that strength to the work in a thousand quiet (and not-so-quiet) ways: emails sent when you were tired, calls made when you didn’t feel like calling, testimony written and submitted, stories shared even when it cost you something, hearings sat through, meetings attended, one more person encouraged to take action,” Johnson wrote in a message to supporters after Pritzker’s decision. “This win is deeply connected to Deb Robertson and to every terminally ill person in Illinois who will now have more say over how their final chapter unfolds—on their own terms, with greater dignity and choice.”
The controversial law opens the door for mentally fit adults to receive end-of-life care after they’ve been evaluated by two physicians who both find that the patient has no more than six months left to live.
The law requires that end-of-life care patients also receive a mental evaluation to determine that they are not being coerced into seeking the life-ending medicine.
“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,” Pritzker said in a news release announcing his decision to sign the bill. “Today, Illinois honors their strength and courage by enacting legislation that enables 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. This legislation will be thoughtfully implemented so that physicians can consult patients on making deeply personal decisions with authority, autonomy, and empathy.”
The law will go into effect next September.
But end of life aid is highly controversial nationwide.
Critics of the legislation often refer to end of life aid as assisted suicide. The bill received stiff opposition from some religious groups.
Oak Park clergy have offered a variety of perspectives when asked earlier this year.
“It’s kind of a slippery slope,” said the Rev. Carl Morello, pastor of Oak Park’s three Catholic parishes. “The church’s position has been to honor life from birth until natural death. But when people are in a terminal situation, we do support them in making the choice for hospice care.”
Rev. David Heim, interim pastor for Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, agrees with Morello that precedent in this case is worth examining theologically.
“If assisted dying begins to change that culture, people who are in a terminal situation, ‘I guess society expects me to take my life,’ that’s the slippery slope,” Heim said. “Christians continue to hold the idea that suffering isn’t pointless.”
Rabbi Adir Glick, Solomon Family Rabbinic Chair at Temple Har Zion in River Forest, said Judaism does not permit taking a life, either one’s own or someone else’s. But there may be a slight caveat.
“My goal is to support families with whatever they are going through with Jewish ethics, but I also understand we live in a different time,” he said. What if he had to counsel a terminally ill person contemplating aid in dying?
“I would leave it open-ended,” he said. “I would bring the Jewish value or ethic as a matter to consider, but I understand it is a very personal decision and a person must make the decision based on the wide scope of their situation.”
Rev. Emily Gage of Unity Temple adopts a similar view and points to a 1988 Unitarian Universalist Congregation statement affirming one’s right to die with dignity.
“I can’t speak for everybody in our congregation, but I believe the locus of decision-making should be within each person,” she said. “For me, it includes making decisions on how you would die, given the parameters of their terminal illness.”
Greg Voss contributed to this report
