Illinois Swallows the Hemlock of Assisted Suicide

The issue of whether killing is an acceptable answer to suffering could not be more crucial.

People take part in a demonstration to oppose the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill at Old Palace Yard in Westminster, London on Nov. 29, 2024. Yui Mok/PA Wire

Commentary

With a scribbled signature by Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, the Land of Lincoln became the 12th state (plus the District of Columbia) to legalize physician-assisted suicide.

The new law, which takes effect in September 2026, euphemistically describes assisted suicide as “medical aid in dying care”—a pretense that prescribed poisonous overdoses are somehow equivalent to administering healing treatments. Give me a break. The point of “care” is, well, care. The point of assisted suicide is immediate death.

So why do I insist on using “assisted suicide” instead of “medical aid in dying?” Because this issue is too important and too much is at stake to fall for propagandistic word engineering.

The term assisted suicide is both accurate and descriptive. “Suicide” means to take one’s own life. “Assisted” means to have help in performing an action, in this case, intentionally becoming dead. In other words, it describes what was done, not why.

In contrast, “medical aid in dying”—or MAID as it is usually called—is euphemistic and intended to deflect from the reality of what advocates seek to normalize. Ditto calling poisonous overdoses prescribed for suicide “medication,” which these laws always do. How can we have a meaningful debate when one side hides behind terms that are designed to lull people into a dangerous complacency?

But complacency is a luxury we cannot afford. The issue of whether killing—because that is what we are talking about—is an acceptable answer to suffering could not be more crucial, particularly to the well-being of people who are seriously ill or disabled. After all, the consequences of such “care” are final and irrevocable.

But if people are terminally ill, Wesley, what difference does it make?

A lot. Dying is a stage of living. Terminally ill patients deserve suicide prevention just as much as anyone else. What does it say about our dismissive attitude toward them when they receive suicide facilitation instead? That’s not compassion, it’s abandonment—particularly in an era in which good palliative care can alleviate most major symptoms.

Besides, the danger of legalizing assisted suicide extends far beyond the terminally ill, about whom the Illinois and similar laws in other U.S. states currently apply. Why do I say currently? Because legalizing assisted suicide for the terminally ill is a launching pad for an ever-expanding regime of suicide enablement. Indeed, once hastened death is legalized and accepted by the general public, the legal limitations that advocates claim will protect the vulnerable are quickly redefined as “barriers” to a good death—and the push is on for the law to be applied beyond the dying, as happened in Canada, where people with disabilities and the chronically ill can now be put to death by doctors.

Why do I say “danger?” Suicide is contagious, meaning that one suicide often leads to others. That’s also true of assisted suicide and lethal jab euthanasia. Once these acts are legalized, the number of such deaths continually increases, to the point that, last year, more than 16,000 people were killed by Canadian doctors or nurse practitioners. Horribly, euthanasia has become Canada’s fifth leading cause of death. In California, 151 people committed assisted suicide in 2016. Last year, the number had increased to 1,032.

Not only that, but several studies have demonstrated that legalizing assisted suicide can increase the number of suicides overall. In 2015, a study published in the Southern Medical Law Journal reported that “PAS [physician-assisted suicide] is associated with an 8.9% increase in total suicide rates” (including assisted suicides), and when “state-specific time trends” are included, “the estimated increase is 6.3%.”

A 2022 study compared suicide rates in European countries that had legalized euthanasia with demographically similar countries that had not done so reported a “concerning pattern” that in the four jurisdictions studied in which euthanasia and assisted suicide are legal, “there have been very steep rises in suicide.”

Again in 2022, a third study published in the Centre for Economics Policy Research concluded that “there is very strong evidence that the legalization of assisted suicide is associated with a significant increase in total suicides.” Did the increase in suicides include unassisted suicides? Yes, “about a 6% increase overall, 13% increase for women.”

Assisted suicide advocacy is certainly not the only factor in our worsening suicide crisis. Clearly, more investigations are needed, but these observations are, to say the least, great cause for concern.

This much is clear. Illustrated by the new Illinois law (and similar passed legislation awaiting the signature of the governor of New York) Western society has become pro-some suicides. Sure, we still energetically seek to prevent youth and veteran suicides, and the media assists in those efforts. But at the same time, the media, popular culture, and the law promote assisted suicide as a means of “dying on one’s own terms.”

To say the least, this sends a mixed message that undermines suicide prevention. Perhaps that is why a recently published position paper by the International Association for Suicide Prevention opposing assisted suicide reads, “We should never take the position that there is a category apart of people who may be ‘better off dead,’ and encourage them to seek death as a solution to their problems.”

In all of this, I am reminded of the prophetic lament by Canadian journalist Andrew Coyne written more than 20 years ago. Reacting to his country’s strong public support for a father who murdered his disabled daughter as a supposed act of compassion, Coyne wrote: “A society that believes in nothing can offer no argument even against death. A culture that has lost its faith in life cannot comprehend why it should be endured.”

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.