CHICAGO, IL - The Most Reverend Thomas John Paprocki, Bishop of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, the Lutheran Care Center, and four Illinois physicians today sued the State of Illinois over its new assisted suicide law, the “End of Life Options” Act. Thomas More Society filed the complaint on their behalf, asking a federal court to block the law before it takes effect on September 12. The law requires faithful medical professionals to help facilitate patient suicides in violation of the Hippocratic Oath, centuries of legal and medical tradition, and their deeply held religious convictions.

“Illinois is forcing faith-based hospitals, nuns, and doctors into supporting the state’s assisted suicide regime,” said Peter Breen, Executive Vice President and Head of Litigation at Thomas More Society. “The law commands Catholic hospitals, religious nursing homes, and faithful doctors to promote suicide’s alleged ‘benefits,’ refer patients to suicide drug prescribers, and then lie on death certificates to cover it up. This immoral scheme flagrantly violates religious liberty and free speech rights, and we intend to stop it.”

For generations, religious healthcare ministries have been a refuge for the sick, elderly, and dying across the Land of Lincoln. Bishop Paprocki brings this suit in his capacity as diocesan bishop, charged under the Catholic Ethical and Religious Directives with ensuring that Catholic hospitals in his diocese uphold Church teaching—including its absolute prohibition on condoning or participating in assisted suicide in any way.

“At the heart of the Catholic Church’s healthcare ministry is the healing work of Christ—to stand with the suffering, to comfort the dying, and to affirm the God-given dignity of every human life,” said Bishop Paprocki. “Illinois’s assisted suicide 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.”

The Lutheran Care Center, supported by 20 area Lutheran churches, has served nearly 3,000 patients in southern Illinois since 1969.

The four physician plaintiffs include two oncologists, Dr. Michal Porubcin and Dr. Michael Hawking, and two rehabilitation specialists, Dr. Mary Keen Kirchoff and Dr. Brian Couri. They are each faithful Catholics who have built their medical careers around healing the sick, not encouraging them to die. Their faith teaches them that every life is a gift from God and that their duty is to comfort and heal, not to end life.

“The State’s demand that physicians begin helping patients accomplish 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,” said Dr. Mary Keen. “As a doctor, I have a responsibility to meet my patients’ existential pain with loving accompaniment, not with abandonment.”

Provisions of the law further threaten the integrity of religious healthcare institutions’ identity and mission by requiring them to allow their own employees to promote assisted suicide on premises, and to assist in patient suicides off-site. The institution cannot fire or discipline them for any of it, even if it violates the institution’s religious guidelines, mission, and identity. For Bishop Paprocki and the Lutheran Care Center, this strikes at the heart of religious institutions’ right and authority to govern their own healthcare ministries.

Additionally, since the law decrees that its procedures “do not constitute suicide [or] assisted suicide,” a vaguely worded and overtly viewpoint-based ban on “misinformation to obstruct access” to assisted suicide threatens sanctions against any health care facility that calls assisted suicide what it is and distinguishes it from legitimate health care. Any provider who follows their conscience instead of complying faces fines up to $10,000, license revocation, and criminal prosecution.

“In medical school, I was taught to care for my patients like family,” continued Dr. Keen. “No one ever would have suggested that killing could be caring. In rehabilitation training, I was taught how to improve the quality of life of people with disabilities, not to help them end their own lives. Assisting someone in committing suicide is the opposite of caring; it is abandonment of the worst kind.”

“I hope and pray this law is quickly enjoined, so that doctors across Illinois can continue practicing time-tested healing principles without fear that refusing to help kill patients will, tragically, end their ability to care for patients at all,” added Dr. Keen.

Plaintiffs intend to file a motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction in the coming days.

Read the complaint in Mary Keen Kirchoff, M.D., et al. v. Treto, Jr., here.