Illinois’s Assisted Suicide Bill Would Turn Medicine into a ‘Culture of Death,’ Representative Warns

By: Sarah Holliday, originally published April 20, 2025, The Washington Stand

Ten U.S. states have legalized assisted suicide. Now, Americans are watching anxiously to see if Illinois will become the 11th.

Senate Bill 9, also known as the End-of-Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act, permits doctors to prescribe suicide drugs — whether face-to-face or through the mail — to adults with terminal illness who have been given six months to live. It was introduced on January 13, 2025, and last week, it officially passed out of committee, meaning the legislation could be voted on any time in the next few weeks before the end of the current legislative session. Family Research Council’s Mary Szoch, who serves as the director of the Center for Human Dignity, mapped out “the tragedy of Illinois’s assisted suicide bill.”

First, she argued, doctors are meant to promote life and well-being and “are notoriously bad at predicting when a person will die.” But in addition to this, Szoch explained how SB 9 does not require a “mental health evaluation,” nor does it contain safeguards to prevent “a person from being coerced by numerous other individuals in their life.” And perhaps most concerning of all, Szoch emphasized, is that “passing SB 9 will allow insurance companies to choose to cover the cheapest option — lethal drugs — instead of actual health care that sustains life.”

On Wednesday’s edition of “Washington Watch.” FRC President Tony Perkins dug deeper into the flaws and dangers of this legislation with state Rep. Bill Hauter, a board-certified physician practicing at Saint Francis Medical Center in Illinois. “I think the Hippocratic Oath makes very clear what you’re supposed to do as a physician,” said Perkins. “This [bill] would turn that on its head.”

Hauter agreed. “I call it liberal progressive FOMO. They see in other states and Canada more liberal policies, and they get a fear of missing out that Illinois doesn’t have the most liberal policies.” As such, he said, “they have glommed on to this physician-assisted suicide. And … I call it physician-assisted suicide. I don’t call it medical-aid-in-dying” as the bill’s text does. “They want to control the language,” Hauter stated, so now, “We have “medical-aid in-dying. … [But] in medicine, it’s called hospice care. It’s called palliative care” — practices defined by the National Institute of Health as “a service for people with serious illnesses who choose not to get (or continue) treatment to cure or control their illness” with the aim of providing “comfort and peace to help improve quality of life for the person nearing death.”

“So,” Hauter stated, “we have that already.” But “physician assisted suicide … goes against our very oath, our sacred oath, that we took as healers, as physicians, who would be advocates for our patients, try to comfort them, try to control their pain.” Legislation that pushes for assisted suicide turns medicine into “a culture of death. We see this all over … our state policies, whether it be abortion policies [or assisted suicide,] there’s just a culture of death.”

Concerning the bill’s progression, Hauter believes it will be challenging to pass. “[T]here’s bipartisan opposition to this,” he noted, “and there’s strong opposition from the Christian communities. … [E]ven the disability community is really strongly against it.”

Perkins took a moment to look at the bigger picture. “You’ve had some really … bad bills in Illinois this year,” he told Hauter. “What’s going on up there?” The doctor called the Republicans’ opposition “Stupid Idea Factory.” He shook his head. “It’s just incredible what they will present. I mean, you don’t see even half of what is brought up” since “quickly, it dies because it’s so outrageous.” Ultimately, “we have a huge population and a very, very liberal, progressive city.”

According to Hauter, it’s these liberal policies that are hurting cities throughout the state. “In the city of Chicago,” he explained, “the crime, the schools that are failing … the high taxes” are all examples, and “they want to take this total destruction of a city … statewide.” And yet, he emphasized, while “we’re in the super minority in Illinois as Republicans, as conservatives … we are not a super minority in the state of Illinois. We’ve [only] been put into a super minority status by unfair maps and media and money and the machine of politics of Chicago.” But as Perkins pointed out, “[W]e have a responsibility to stand up against” these liberal agendas.

Hauter agreed, offering a stark warning about the dangers of physician-assisted suicide, which painted a chilling picture of its consequences if left unchallenged. For Hauter, this calls for a reevaluation of such policies to protect the sanctity of life and the patient-physician bond. As he cautioned, “I call it the slippery cliff because it’s not a slope.” He emphasized how rapidly the practice expands, citing places like Canada, Oregon, and Europe, where “it quickly gets out of control” and, at least in Canada, has become a leading cause of death.

Hauter’s concerns extend to the erosion of trust, in which he noted that assisted suicide laws “will change [a patient’s] relationship with their physician” as well as with insurance providers, who may see death as “the cheapest care.” Ultimately, Hauter’s cautionary words were a call for policymakers to reject such measures, ensuring that health care remains a beacon of hope and healing, rather than a pathway to expedited endings.

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.