Catholic bishops and religious sisters in multiple states are leading efforts to roll back assisted suicide laws, launching lawsuits to help protect religious objectors who do not want to participate in the killing of medical patients.
Church leaders in New York and Illinois have won multiple victories in recent weeks in federal district court after bringing suits against the newly launched suicide regimes in those states.
In New York, Rockville Centre Bishop John Barres and a coalition of four communities of religious sisters won a victory in July when U.S. District Judge Anne Nardacci said the state would be barred from enforcing its new suicide law against the Catholic plaintiffs while their federal suit played out.
Two separate lawsuits in Illinois, meanwhile, have also brought relief to Catholic objectors. U.S. District Judge Franklin Valderrama said in August that Springfield Bishop Thomas Paprocki and several other plaintiffs, including Christian doctors and a Lutheran care home, would not have to abide by the state's suicide law and help patients kill themselves.
In September, meanwhile, Valderrama ruled again in favor of a coalition of religious plaintiffs, including the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm as well as the Little Sisters of the Poor, all of whom had brought suit against the Illinois law.
In all three cases, the plaintiffs only won temporary reprieves meant to forestall enforcement of the law while the lawsuits continue through the federal court system.
And though advocates hailed the rulings, Chicago archbishop Cardinal Blase Cupich on Sept. 11 argued that the Illinois law should be struck down "permanently."
"[T]he Church's objection to this statute is not an attempt to impose Catholic teaching on non-Catholics," the archbishop said at the time. Rather, "it is an effort to stop the State from compelling Catholic health care providers to violate their conscience."
Church strongly opposes assisted suicide, euthanasia
The Catholic Church has been at the forefront of efforts to roll back assisted suicide in countries around the world in recent years. The controversial practice, which is growing in popularity around the world, allows doctors to prescribe lethal doses of medication to patients who wish to end their own lives.
Advocates of assisted suicide usually argue that the laws only allow doctors to help kill adult patients who are terminally ill and likely to die in the very near future. But in many cases where the practice has been introduced it has expanded to include broader classes of patients.
In the Netherlands in 2024, for instance, a physically healthy 29-year-old woman was allowed to kill herself with a doctor's help on the grounds that she was suffering from depression. This year, the country recorded its first euthanasia of a child under the age of 12.
In Canada, meanwhile, about 100,000 people have taken their own lives since the country legalized assisted suicide in 2016. Thousands of those individuals reportedly did not have a "reasonably foreseeable death," but doctors were allowed to help kill them anyway.
Numerous U.S. states have legalized the practice in recent years. New York's and Illinois' respective suicide laws went into effect this year.
In both cases the religious objectors were suing to stop the state from forcing them to promote assisted suicide. While narrow opt-out laws mean the Catholic care providers are not obligated to actively facilitate the specific act of suicide, the state laws require them to participate in the suicide regime in various other ways, including touting the alleged benefits of taking one's own life.
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing both the Springfield and Rockville Centre lawsuits, says that refusing to participate in such rules "invites significant fines, license revocation, or even time behind bars."
In a statement to EWTN News, Paprocki said 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."
The Illinois suicide law "undermines that mission by forcing Catholic hospitals and those who serve in them to push death onto their most vulnerable patients," the bishop said.
"We must be free to serve the sick and the dying according to our faith, not according to the state's mandate," he added.
The lawsuits are continuing their way through the federal courts and may reach the Supreme Court in time. Meanwhile, Catholic leaders continue to denounce the practice of assisted suicide, including Pope Leo XIV, who during a visit to France in September described the practice as "false compassion."
"It is impossible to regard causing death as something normal. What is legal is not necessarily moral," the Holy Father said.
