UPDATE, 6/2/25: The Illinois Senate failed to take up SB 1950 for a vote before legislators adjourned until the state’s fall veto session. Though the bill is likely to return in a future session, the attempts by Democrat politicians to disguise the bill inside a completely unrelated bill in order to fast track its passage by the Senate drew significant outrage from various camps. Even the Daily Mail reported on the move, calling it a “sneaky attempt to quietly pass assisted suicide legislation” and an “absurd tactic.”
Disability advocacy group Access Living stated in a May 27 advocacy alert:
SB 1950 HFA 2 claims to be “medical aid in dying” (MAID), and proponents claim the bill is about offering a “choice” to die. But as many people with disabilities know, you can’t choose what you don’t have access to. If you can’t get hospice, pain relief, mental health care, or support to live at home — PAS [physician-assisted suicide] is not a choice. It’s a shortcut. A system that denies care, ignores suffering, and then offers a prescription to die is broken. You can’t call it a choice if people don’t have another way to manage pain or live with dignity.
Governor JB Pritzker did not issue comment on his position regarding the legislation.
UPDATE, 5/30/25: The Illinois House has voted to pass SB 1950, a sanitary food preparation bill that includes an amendment that would legalize assisted suicide. The bill will now return to the Senate with just two days left in the legislative session. According to WAND, it is unclear if it will clear the Senate with the new assisted suicide amendment.
UPDATE, 5/29/25: SB 1950, a sanitary food preparation bill that includes an amendment aimed at legalizing assisted suicide, has been voted out of an Illinois House committee and will now go to the House for a vote. If it passes, it will be sent to the Illinois Senate.
Amendment 2 states, “Medical aid in dying is part of general medical care and complements other end-of-life options, such as comfort care, pain control, palliative care, and hospice care…”
5/25/25: Legislators in Illinois are working to quietly legalize assisted suicide by attaching pro-assisted death language to a food preparation sanitation bill as an amendment. The move comes after a proposed assisted suicide bill appears to have stalled in the House and Senate as the 2025 legislative session comes to a close.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- An assisted suicide bill introduced in Illinois in January appears to have stalled in both the House and Senate, and the legislative session will close on May 31.
- Democratic Rep. Robyn Gabel has attached the stalled assisted suicide bill’s language to a food preparation safety bill as an amendment.
- The assisted suicide language allows for people diagnosed with a “terminal illness” and given six months or less to live to be prescribed a deadly drug cocktail.
THE DETAILS:
According to the Catholic Conference of Illinois, a lawmaker in the state is attempting to quietly push an assisted suicide bill through the legislature during the final days of the 2025 session. It appears to be a last-ditch effort to get assisted suicide legalized by hiding the legislation within another bill.
As reported by the Illinois Family Institute, Representative Robyn Gabel (D-Chicago) attached an amendment with assisted death language from a stalled bill to SB 1950, a food preparation safety bill. Amendment 2 states, “Medical aid in dying is part of general medical care and complements other end-of-life options, such as comfort care, pain control, palliative care, and hospice care…”
It defines “Terminal disease” as an incurable and irreversible disease that will, within reasonable medical judgment, result in death within 6 months.”
To diminish the act of physician-assisted killing for what it really is — suicide — the amendment stipulates that deaths “in accordance with this Act do not, for any purposes, constitute suicide, assisted suicide, euthanasia, mercy killing, homicide, murder, manslaughter, elder abuse or neglect, or any other civil or criminal violation under the law.”
THE BACKSTORY:
In January, legislators in Illinois filed an assisted suicide bill in both the Senate (SB 9) and the House (HB1328). Known as the “End of Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act,” it aimed to allow a person considered “terminally ill” to receive and self-administer lethal drugs after a physician determined they were mentally sound and had less than six months to live.
Though it made some progress, the bill is currently stalled. It has seen no movement in the Senate since April, while in the House, it remains in committee. Having not passed in either chamber, there is little to no chance that it will pass with just days left in the session. However, SB 1950, the state’s food preparation sanitation bill, has already passed the Illinois Senate and is now before the Illinois House. If the House passes the bill, the Senate will then only need to concur for the bill to go to the governor’s desk.
THE BOTTOM LINE:
By taking language from the assisted suicide bill, which is not likely to pass before the session closes on May 31, and adding it to an unrelated bill, pro-assisted death legislators are hoping to quietly legalize assisted suicide.
