Springfield Bishop Thomas Paprocki joins doctors, nursing home in suit against Illinois suicide law
Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, joins a Lutheran nursing home and four doctors to file a lawsuit against Illinois’ End‑of‑Life Options law, claiming it forces them to facilitate assisted suicide against conscience. The suit argues the law compels medical and faith‑based providers to promote and provide assisted suicide, violating U.S. bishops’ Catholic health directives that forbid participation. Plaintiffs contend the law undermines Catholic healthcare’s mission to uphold human dignity and to offer compassionate care rather than “pushing death” on vulnerable patients. The lawsuit follows similar actions in New York, where Catholic nuns were exempted from participating after a court filing, and the Illinois law took effect on Aug. 5.
about 2 months ago
The Catholic Bishop of Springfield, Thomas Paprocki, has joined a Lutheran nursing home and four Illinois physicians in a federal lawsuit challenging Illinois’ newly enacted “End‑of‑Life Options” Act, which legalizes physician‑assisted suicide for patients with a prognosis of six months or less. The plaintiffs argue that the law compels medical professionals and religiously affiliated health facilities to participate in a practice they consider a grave moral evil, violating religious liberty, free‑speech rights, and professional conscience. 1 2
The statute, identified as SB 1950, was passed in late 2025 and is slated to take effect on September 12, 2026. It requires health‑care providers to either prescribe lethal medication to eligible patients or discuss the option and refer them to providers who will. Religious hospitals and other faith‑based facilities must allow employees to promote the law on‑site and to assist patients off‑site on their own time, without the ability to discipline those workers. 1
The complaint, filed on August 11 2026 in U.S. District Court in Chicago, is brought by:
The suit alleges that the law forces doctors to help patients end their lives, compels health‑care entities to promote assisted suicide, and requires them to host on‑site practitioners who facilitate the practice, thereby infringing on religious liberty and free‑speech protections. 1 2
Peter Breen, executive vice‑president of the Thomas More Society, called the statute an “immoral scheme” that flagrantly violates religious liberty and free‑speech rights. Bishop Paprocki emphasized that Catholic health care is meant to “advance the healing work of Christ” and to affirm the God‑given dignity of every human life, which the law undermines by forcing Catholic hospitals to promote death. 2
Physician Mary Keen echoed this view, stating that the requirement to 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.” 2
The Illinois case follows a similar lawsuit filed in July 2026 by the Diocese of Rockville Center and four religious sister communities in New York, which secured a temporary stay on that state’s assisted‑suicide law. The plaintiffs cite the New York outcome as a precedent for protecting conscience rights. 1
Internationally, advocates warn that once legalized, assisted‑suicide statutes tend to expand. Ten years after Canada’s legalization, assisted suicide accounts for about 5 percent of all deaths, and disability‑rights groups have reported abuses and a disproportionate impact on vulnerable populations. 1
These statements underscore the plaintiffs’ contention that the law forces them to act against deeply held religious and professional convictions.
The lawsuit seeks an injunction preventing enforcement of the “End‑of‑Life Options” Act in Illinois, arguing that compliance would violate constitutional protections of religious liberty and the ethical directives governing Catholic health care. The outcome could have significant implications for the balance between state‑mandated assisted‑suicide programs and the conscience rights of medical professionals and faith‑based institutions.
Catholic doctrine versus state assisted‑suicide legislation
Catholic doctrine rejects state legalization of assisted suicide because it treats the intentional ending of human life as a legitimate medical or legal service. The Church distinguishes this sharply from refusing disproportionate treatment, accepting natural death, and providing palliative care.
Assisted suicide occurs when a person intentionally provides the means or assistance by which another person takes his or her own life. Euthanasia occurs when someone directly causes another person’s death—whether by action or omission—with the purpose of eliminating suffering.
The Church teaches that both are intrinsically evil: the act is wrong in itself and cannot be justified by suffering, autonomy, consent, prognosis, or perceived “quality of life.” Samaritanus bonus states:
“Euthanasia is an intrinsically evil act, in every situation or circumstance.”
It describes euthanasia as the deliberate and morally unacceptable killing of a human person and teaches that it involves the evil proper to suicide or murder, depending on the circumstances.
Assisted suicide is likewise morally wrong because it involves another person in the deliberate destruction of human life. Even when a person’s anguish or psychological distress diminishes personal responsibility, that does not change the objective nature of the act itself.
Catholic opposition concerns not only individual acts but also the legal framework that authorizes or normalizes them.
The right to life is foundational: all other rights, including freedom and autonomy, depend upon the continued existence of the person. Consequently, the state cannot create a genuine “right” to be killed or assisted in suicide. Samaritanus bonus teaches that laws supporting euthanasia or assisted suicide are gravely unjust because they invoke a false right to choose death and undermine the foundation of the legal order.
The Church’s concern is therefore not simply that some individuals might make a tragic decision. Legalization also:
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith warns that legalized assisted suicide can contribute to a culture in which lives are evaluated according to efficiency and usefulness, leaving vulnerable persons at risk of being treated as “discarded lives.”
The United States bishops likewise teach that laws legitimizing assisted suicide and euthanasia are “profoundly unjust and immoral,” and they support legislative efforts to oppose both practices while promoting assistance, health care, and protection for vulnerable people.
A common argument for assisted-suicide legislation is that competent adults should have the autonomy to decide when and how they die. Catholic teaching recognizes the importance of personal freedom, but freedom is not the power to make morally legitimate any choice whatsoever.
Human beings possess dignity because they are persons created by God, not because they are autonomous, healthy, mentally competent, independent, or free from pain. A person’s dignity therefore remains intact during dementia, disability, terminal illness, dependency, and severe suffering.
The Catholic response to “death with dignity” is not to deny dignity to those who suffer, but to reject the idea that dignity requires intentionally causing death. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales summarizes the danger: when another person kills someone on request, that person assumes power over life and death and effectively treats the victim’s life as lacking value. This danger is especially serious for elderly, sick, and disabled people who may already doubt the worth of their continued existence.
Thus, the Church proposes care, accompaniment, pain relief, psychological support, spiritual assistance, and human solidarity as the authentic response to a desire for death.
A physician’s role is to care for the patient, not to intentionally cause death. The USCCB’s Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services states:
“Catholic health care institutions may never condone or participate in euthanasia or assisted suicide in any way.”
Patients who request euthanasia are nevertheless to receive loving care, psychological and spiritual support, and appropriate treatment for pain and other symptoms so that they may live with dignity until natural death.
This means Catholic hospitals, health-care systems, professionals, and ministries may not:
The Church also rejects the claim that legalization creates a corresponding obligation for medical personnel to participate. Since there is no moral right to dispose arbitrarily of one’s life, no health-care worker can be compelled to perform an act that is intrinsically wrong.
A Catholic institution must, however, continue caring for the patient. Refusing participation in assisted suicide does not justify abandoning someone who requests it.
Catholic doctrine does not require every possible medical intervention to be used indefinitely. There is a morally important distinction between:
A patient may refuse or discontinue medical procedures that offer little reasonable hope of benefit or impose excessive burdens. The intention in such a case is not to kill but to avoid disproportionate treatment and allow the underlying illness to take its natural course. Pope John Paul II explicitly called for careful teaching on the difference between refusing “over-zealous” treatment and deliberately taking life.
For example:
By contrast, prescribing a lethal dose with the intention that the patient ingest it and die is assisted suicide, even if the patient performs the final physical act.
The Church also distinguishes the refusal of disproportionate treatment from the withdrawal of ordinary care.
Food, hydration, ordinary nursing, cleanliness, warmth, and basic human presence are not automatically “medical treatments” that may be withdrawn simply because a person is disabled, elderly, or dependent. Pope John Paul II warned that removing nutrition and hydration with the intention of causing death must be rejected, while emphasizing a presumption in favor of providing medically assisted nutrition and hydration when patients need them.
There can be circumstances in which medically assisted nutrition or hydration becomes excessively burdensome, medically ineffective, or incapable of achieving its purpose. The moral evaluation then requires attention to the patient’s condition, the burdens involved, and the intention behind the decision. It must never become a disguised means of intentionally causing death.
The Church strongly supports authentic palliative care: treatment directed toward relieving pain and symptoms, providing comfort, and accompanying the person through the final stage of life.
Palliative care is not euthanasia. Its purpose is to care for the patient, not to cause death. The USCCB directs Catholic institutions to provide appropriate remedies for pain and other symptoms while preserving the patient’s dignity until natural death.
The Church also warns against laws that place assisted suicide under the heading of palliative care. Calling euthanasia or assisted suicide “medical assistance in dying” can create moral confusion by suggesting that intentionally causing death is simply another form of symptom management. Samaritanus bonus calls this a grave cultural confusion and warns that vulnerable people who need better care and companionship may instead be led toward suicide.
Palliative care does not promise to eliminate every form of suffering. It offers competent medical relief together with human presence, compassion, and Christian hope. The Church describes this as the “wine of hope”: a form of solidarity that helps the suffering person experience that life retains meaning even in weakness and near death.
Catholics may not support assisted-suicide legislation as though it were a morally legitimate expansion of human rights. The Church calls legislators and citizens to protect life in law, oppose the legalization or decriminalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide, and promote alternatives that address the actual causes of despair. The Pontifical Academy for Life urged public authorities to exclude legalization or decriminalization because accepting the voluntary killing of one member of society by another would undermine a fundamental principle of civil society.
Public advocacy should therefore include:
Pope John Paul II emphasized that legalization poses a direct threat to those least capable of defending themselves. Pope Leo XIV has likewise reaffirmed that every human life, from conception until natural death, is sacred and that the right to life is the foundation of every other human right.
Catholic doctrine holds that:
The Church’s position is not a rejection of compassion or patient dignity; it is the conviction that genuine compassion never abandons the suffering person and never makes death the solution to suffering.