Pritzker Still Considering Assisted Suicide Bill
Governor JB Pritzker speaks to reporters Wednesday in Chicago. (Photo: The Illinoize)
Governor JB Pritzker said Wednesday he has not decided whether he’ll sign a controversial bill on his desk authorizing assisted suicide for Illinoisans facing the final days and weeks of terminal illness.
The measure, known as “Medical Aid in Dying” passed the House in May and was surprisingly advanced in the Senate in the final hours of the fall veto session, landing on Pritzker’s desk.
He said shortly after the bill passed that his office was blindsided by the bill and were reviewing the legislation.
A month later, Pritzker says he hasn’t made a decision about signing the bill.
“Every time I talk to somebody, it has a little bit of an effect. You’re sort of cumulatively gathering information,” Pritzker said at an unrelated news conference. “I know there are people who feel passionately on both sides. I have said before that I have friends who’ve gone through this with their relatives. It’s painful for the person who’s experiencing the pain in the last six months of their lives, as well as for the entire family.”
Pritzker says whatever he decides on the bill, it will come down to compassion.
“It’s a hard issue. And I don’t want anybody to think that making up your mind about this is very easy. It’s not,” he said. “I think there’s a lot to consider, but most of all, it’s about compassion. There’s evidence and information on both sides that leads me to think seriously about what direction to go.”
Pritzker says he brought the issue up in his meeting last month with Pope Leo XIV, who he met privately with at The Vatican, but didn’t say what the Pope’s response to the issue was. The Catholic Church has historically opposed euthanasia.
“Obviously, we are members of different religions [and] don’t really disagree so much as just have differences in that way,” Pritzker, who is Jewish, said. “So it was kind of a brief part of a conversation in which we were dismissing all those things and then getting to the things that we really have so much in common. And I so much respect who he is and what he represents.”
Pritzker didn’t lay out his time frame for acting on the legislation.
