Springfield Bishop Thomas Paprocki joins doctors, nursing home in suit against Illinois suicide law

The bishop of Springfield, Illinois, is joining a Lutheran nursing home and a group of doctors to sue the state over its assisted suicide law, with the coalition arguing that the state’s suicide regime abandons “nearly two millennia of medical practice” while requiring objectors to participate in it.

The suit , brought in U.S. District Court by Bishop Thomas Paprocki, the Lutheran Care Center, and four Illinois-based doctors, argues that the Illinois “End-of-Life Options” law requires doctors to participate in helping patients kill themselves even if they conscientiously object to doing so.

“Health care entities,” meanwhile, must promote the “benefits” of the suicide law to patients even if they object to doing so, the suit says; those providers are also required to allow on-site practitioners to facilitate patient access to assisted suicide.

The lawsuit argues that both the doctors and the Lutheran nursing facility “[cannot] in good conscience comply” with the law. The suit also says that Paprocki is obligated to uphold the U.S. bishops’ Catholic health service directives that forbid Catholic health facilities from participating in assisted suicide.

In a press release…