For some years now, there has been an ongoing conflict between advocates of certain medical procedures and others who believe those procedures violate their religious beliefs. We've seen this not only in healthcare but even in the baking of cakes, but it's in healthcare where some of the greatest ethical issues arise.
One such is Illinois' assisted suicide law, where court challenges have arisen to the law's requirement that Catholic nuns working in hospitals, nursing homes, and hospices facilitate assisted suicides. Now the state of Illinois has agreed to two temporary restraining orders relieving Catholic nuns and other healthcare providers from having to offer or carry out this practice.
Illinois agreed to two temporary restraining orders against compelling Catholic nuns and doctors to facilitate assisted suicide in their hospitals, nursing homes and end-of-life care facilities, in recent challenges by the Thomas More Society and Becket religious liberty law firm.
The Land of Lincoln's End-of-Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act, the first so-called medical aid in dying law in the Midwest, was set to take effect Saturday, the day after the second TRO was approved. The first, primarily for physicians, was Aug. 21, with both cases overseen by U.S. District Judge Franklin Valderrama, nominated by President Trump.
There's one key aspect of this, aside from the obvious constitutional guarantee of freedom of conscience.
"To be clear, the Church's objection to this statute is not an attempt to impose Catholic teaching on non-Catholics; it is an effort to stop the State from compelling Catholic health care providers to violate their conscience" by helping patients kill themselves, plaintiff Cardinal Blase Cupich, archbishop of Chicago, said in response to the Sept. 11 order, which applies primarily to nuns.
Becket said the law's "gag order" provision is so broad that Illinois could punish nuns for simply telling a patient, "Don’t kill yourself. Jesus loves you. Your life is precious."
That gag order would seem to violate the First Amendment not only in its interference with the Catholic caregivers' freedom to practice their religion, which necessarily includes adhering to the moral standards of the Catholic faith, but also their right to freedom of speech. It appears that this particular gag order was aimed directly at religious healthcare providers.
The second restraining order has to do with another healthcare issue that has been hotly contested in recent years.
The second Illinois order closely followed Oregon agreeing not to condition adoptions on applicants' willingness to treat gender-confused adoptees as the opposite sex and arrange so-called gender-affirming care for them, more than a year after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled it would likely lose a First Amendment challenge.
Not taking a chance that it would lose in the 2nd Circuit, Vermont gave up its gender-affirming conditions on foster care earlier this year to settle two lawsuits.
Both of these are wins for the faithful involved, and arguably for medical ethics, especially the principle of primum non nocere. But these orders are only temporary. The contest has yet to be fully decided.
What's troublesome about the assisted suicide laws is how they mirror similar laws in Canada, where, as of this writing, as much as five percent of all deaths are the result of their Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program. In Canada, the process has gone from a desperate measure to something that the Canadian healthcare system is encouraging, and not solely for people dealing with painful end-of-life scenarios. Having that become the case here doesn't bear contemplating, and making sure that providers whose faith precludes them from participating is one long step towards making sure that the USA, in blue states and red, doesn't start to emulate that practice here.
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