Illinois has crafted a law that is among the most extreme of the world. "The state should stop trying to make Catholic nuns help patients kill themselves."
Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, two orders of Catholic religious sisters, and an Illinois pharmacist filed a federal lawsuit September 3 challenging Illinois' new assisted-suicide law, which is scheduled to take effect September 12.
The Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, the Little Sisters of the Poor, and community pharmacist Luke Vander Bleek join the archbishop of Chicago in asking a federal court to block the law before it takes effect on September 12, when healthcare providers who refuse to take part in assisted suicide will face significant fines and penalties.
Their representation is the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has successfully represented plaintiffs in many other religious liberty cases, including several involving the Little Sisters of the Poor. Mark Rienzi, president of Becket and lead attorney for the healthcare providers, said in a statement:
The state should stop trying to make Catholic nuns help patients kill themselves. 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.
For nearly 175 years, Catholic healthcare ministries have been a refuge for the sick, elderly, and dying across Illinois. Plaintiffs argue the new law would violate the religious liberty of Catholic providers and other medical providers who believe assisted suicide is a grave moral evil.
Becket Fund laid out the vast scope of the “End-of-Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act,” known as “Deb's Law”:
The law does not merely permit assisted suicide: it forces objecting healthcare providers into its machinery.
Religious providers who object to participating in assisted suicide must still inform patients about their “right” to kill themselves, help them qualify for lethal drugs, and pass them along to someone willing to help them obtain those drugs. Meanwhile, pharmacists like Vander Bleek must fill lethal prescriptions or refer patients to another pharmacy that will.
In other words, Illinois makes religious healthcare providers punch the patient’s ticket to death even when doing so violates their faith.
Illinois also imposes a gag order on religious caregivers who want to speak a life-affirming message against suicide. [The law’s] definition of coercion and undue influence is so broad that it risks punishing the Sisters and healthcare providers in the Archdiocese simply for telling a suffering patient, “Don’t kill yourself. Jesus loves you. Your life is precious.”
The complaint points out that the law is among the most extreme around the world:
Indeed, the planned “Suicide Counseling Mandate” is far broader than anything required by states like California, Oregon, and Washington. And jurisdictions such as New Zealand and Victoria, Australia, which have also legalized assisted suicide, expressly forbid doctors from raising assisted suicide with their patients. Yet Illinois will soon require it.
Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker visited Pope Leo XIV — himself from Illinois — at the Vatican in November 2025. At the time, the assisted-suicide bill had passed the Illinois Senate, where it was added as an amendment to a bill introduced as “sanitary food preparation” and passed during an overnight legislative session, but the governor had not signed it into law yet.
Pope Leo's home state
Pope Leo “very explicitly” asked the governor to reject it, but Pritzker signed it into law on December 12, 2025. Asked about it shortly after, Pope Leo said he was “very disappointed” in the outcome.
This lawsuit, Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm v. Prince, is at least the third against Illinois over this issue, and the second involving a Catholic bishop. Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois; the Lutheran Care Center; and four Illinois physicians filed a complaint August 11. On August 21, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order, blocking referral requirements for the plaintiffs.
Another lawsuit, Payne v. Pritzker — focused on the law’s implications for people with disabilities — was brought by disability-rights organizations, an Illinois physician and two disabled Illinoisans. Plaintiff Ebony Payne, a quadriplegic, has been an outspoken opponent of the law. Her attorney, Michael Bien, told Chicago’s WTTW:
The perception that Ebony is suffering every day, that she is better off dead, is discrimination. The idea that we can categorize people and say certain people should be eligible for suicide and other people are not is discrimination.
Becket Senior Counsel Adele Keim argued in an interview that the whole law is illegal under the Americans with Disabilities Act:
If you are a healthy young person and you want to commit suicide, the state bans anyone from helping you to do that. There's a criminal prohibition on assisting a suicide. But if you are sick, terminally ill, then the state doesn't protect you from suicide.
The complaint frequently mentions considerations of mental health and the concerns of mental health professionals. The first named defendant is Terry Prince, director of the Illinois Department of Veteran Affairs; the complaint notes that veterans “commit suicide at approximately twice the rate of the average population” and that the new law puts them at particular risk.
The law is scheduled to take effect during Suicide Prevention Month, which is observed each September.
In the words of Cardinal Cupich, “We pray that the courts will protect our freedom to continue advocating and caring for the sick and dying as our faith demands.”
This lawsuit is just the latest being filed by Catholics and others who are challenging the growing number of states and nations that are passing assisted suicide legislation.
