Article By Ryan Foley
Catholics nuns are suing Illinois, alleging the state is violating their constitutional rights and deeply held religious convictions by forcing them to promote assisted suicide and barring them from advising patients against it.
Several groups of Roman Catholic nuns and the organizations they run, along with Cardinal Blase Cupich of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago and a Catholic pharmacist, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on Thursday over the End-of-Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act. The complaint challenges the law’s provision requiring healthcare providers to advise terminally ill patients about “the foreseeable risks and benefits” of all end-of-life options, including assisted suicide.
In addition to requiring healthcare providers to inform patients about assisted suicide, the measure mandates that those opposed to assisted suicide on religious or moral grounds refer patients to healthcare providers willing to provide it and prohibits healthcare providers from working to “prevent a qualified patient” from “obtaining or self-administering suicide drugs.”
Plaintiffs allege the law forces them to violate their deeply held religious beliefs about the sanctity of human life in accordance with Catholic Church teachings.
While the lawsuit focuses primarily on the End-of-Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act, it also challenges aspects of the Health Care Right of Conscience Act. The complaint highlights the law’s mandate that healthcare facilities “adopt written […] protocols […] to ensure that conscience-based objections do not cause impairment of patients’ health.”
An provision of the Health Care Right of Conscience Act requires healthcare facilities to “inform a patient of the patient’s condition, prognosis, legal treatment options, and risks and benefits of the treatment options in a timely manner,” and stresses that “Nothing in this Act shall relieve a physician from any duty […] to inform his or her patient of the patient’s condition, prognosis, legal treatment options, and risks and benefits of treatment options.”
The lawsuit maintains that the laws violate several provisions of the First Amendment, including the Church Autonomy Doctrine, the Free Exercise Clause, and protections for freedom of association and assembly, as well as against compelled speech. It also cites conflicts with the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Affordable Care Act, as well as Article II of the U.S. Constitution and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
The plaintiffs are asking the court to bar the defendants from enforcing the laws against them, and to declare that the laws violate several provisions of the U.S. Constitution and federal law. They are also seeking nominal, compensatory, actual and punitive damages, in addition to attorneys’ fees.
Mark Rienzi, president of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and lead attorney for the plaintiffs, accused the state of “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.”
“Patients deserve the freedom to seek healing, hope, and accompaniment without the government forcing assisted suicide into the conversation,” he added. “The Constitution protects that freedom.”
Luke Vander Bleek, a devout Catholic who owns Fitzgerald Pharmacy in Morrison, Illinois, has joined the lawsuit as one of the plaintiffs.
“I became a pharmacist because I wanted to help people heal, never to hasten their deaths,” he asserted. “But now Illinois wants my pharmacy to dispense prescriptions for suicide in violation of my Catholic beliefs. The state shouldn’t force me to choose between serving my neighbors and following my conscience.”
Mother Julie Marie, mother provincial of the Chicago Province of the Little Sisters of the Poor, said the elderly people who come to their homes “are looking for a place where they will be cherished and cared for until natural death.”
“They should be free to choose that kind of care without having assisted suicide inserted into it by the state,” she said. “We simply want to continue giving them the loving home they came to us for.”
Mother Mary Rose Heery, prioress general of the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, offered a similar analysis.
“Our residents come to us at one of the most vulnerable moments of their lives,” she said. “Our vocation is to give witness to them, through everything we do, that their lives remain precious and that they will never be abandoned. Illinois cannot ask us to replace that promise with help ending their lives,”
Cardinal Cupich said the Gospel calls on believers “to uphold the inviolable dignity and worth of the human person, from life’s first moment to its natural end.”
“As Catholics, we oppose efforts to undermine human dignity by pushing our brothers and sisters toward suicide,” Cupich said. “We pray that the courts will protect our freedom to continue advocating and caring for the sick and dying as our faith demands.”
Thursday’s lawsuit is not the only litigation against the End-of-Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act. Two weeks ago, Illinois officials agreed not to enforce the law against Bishop Thomas Paprocki of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield, the Lutheran Care Center and several Catholic physicians as their lawsuit against the measure proceeds.
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