As Illinois considers a bill that would make it the eleventh state in the U.S. to legalize medically assisted dying, some residents are growing increasingly concerned that the proposed legislation could do more harm than good to terminally ill patients.
A group of concerned residents gathered at the Effingham Event Center Thursday night for a “Red Alert Action Meeting” hosted by Effingham Area Right to Life. During the meeting, residents heard from several speakers, including two doctors, who discussed the bill and their reasons for opposing it.
The proposed bill, SB3499, is also called the End-of-Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act. The bill was sent to the Subcommittee on End-of-Life Issues on March 7.
Under the bill, patients would have to make two oral requests and one written request for aid-in-dying medication. Patients would have to wait no less than five days after making their first oral request before the medication could be administered.
Only adults would be able to request aid-in-dying medication under the bill, and patients would have to prove their Illinois residency. Additionally, physicians would be responsible for confirming that a patient is of sound mind and hasn’t been coerced before any requests are approved.
Valerie Kemme, who identified herself as an “ethical end-of-life care advocate” during the meeting, told residents about what she believes are the “hidden dangers” of the bill and expressed her concerns regarding the bill’s “supposed safeguards.”
“The words chosen for this bill are intended to sanitize the issue, and make it sound more acceptable.
She argued that the bill would encourage insurance companies, and in some cases patients, to choose aid-in-dying medication over costly but potentially life-saving treatments.
“The more I learn, the more concerned I get,” Kemme said.
Kemme criticized ACLU of Illinois, Compassion and Choices and Final Options Illinois and claimed that groups like these help patients seeking aid-in-dying medication find doctors who are more likely to approve their requests. She referred to this process as “doctor shopping.”
“They have been working for decades to make assisted suicide legal in every state,” Kemme said.
She also noted that the proposed bill only requires patients to be evaluated by a licensed mental health professional if their physician is unable to confirm that a patient is of sound mind before approving a request for aid-in-dying medication.
“Depression and anger seem to be inherent in cases of terminal illness,” Kemme said. “It would make more sense if the bill were to require a professional mental health evaluation for every patient to diagnose and treat mental health issues that may be driving their request for lethal drugs.”
Additionally, Kemme argued that the bill “opens the door for those with bad motives” to coerce and influence a patient’s decision to request aid-in-dying medication.
“No safeguards are going to be enough,” Kemme said.
Dr. Ruben Boyajian, who has been practicing medicine in Effingham for more than 40 years, expressed his deep ethical concerns regarding the bill, and he echoed Kemme’s claim that the safeguards meant to protect vulnerable patients could be removed after the bill is approved, calling it a “slippery slope.”
“As a physician who has spent decades trying to heal patients, I am opposed to the proposed bill, SB3499,” Boyajian said. “If physician assisted suicide is legalized in Illinois, we are likely to see greater health care disparities among marginalized people, individuals that do not have the agency to speak for themselves and that would be coerced into unethical treatments to limit the financial burdens for end-of-life care.”
He said if signed into law, the bill would be the “most shocking unethical transformation in modern medical practice” and contradictory to his duty as a physician to “do no harm.”
“No one should be abandoned near the end of their life,” Boyajian said. “We are not death administrators.”
As he concluded his speech, Boyajian called for an increased focus and dedication to providing and creating access to quality hospice care.
“In sum, I view the passage of physician assisted suicide as a failure of the medical care system. In contrast, experience has taught me that patients who are suffering at the end of life are in need of more compassion, care and spiritual support than offering a pill to end their lives because they feel they are a burden,” he said.
Also speaking during the event was Kay Wheeler, who worked for Lincoln Land Hospice as a hospice nurse for more than 20 years. She, like Boyajian, advocated for hospice care as an alternative to aid-in-dying medication.
“Emotional support is provided continuously, and families have a chance to say goodbye and to say things that are in their heart that they wouldn’t have had the chance to say had they taken some deadly drugs,” Wheeler said.
Wheeler also told her own personal story involving end-of-life care. She said her daughter, Amanda, was diagnosed with Leukemia about 30 years ago when she was 16, and Amanda suffered a stroke and was placed into a medically induced coma for about a month after being overwhelmed by her treatment.
“We were told in the following days that kids with her type of leukemia that end up in ICU never survive, and that rings in my head to this day,” Wheeler said.
Amanda came out of the coma, and today, she’s married and has children of her own despite being told she wouldn’t be able to have children due to the treatment she received when she had leukemia.
“If assisted suicide has been on the table during this situation, we could have missed out on her high school graduation,” Wheeler said.
Another Effingham doctor who spoke out against the proposed legislation, Dr. John Kay, cited both professional and personal reasons for opposing the bill. Kay has cared for his for wife, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, for more than 30 years, and at just 16 years-old, he cared for his mother until she died as the result a malignant melanoma.
“Any doctor would be able, under this bill, to sign off on these issues with patients they know nothing about, don’t care about, don’t respect and aren’t intimately involved with. That saddens me,” Kay said. “Passing bills that allow us to make life-ending policies from the vantage point of poor decision making may, on the surface, be well meaning, but it is not right. It is not fair, and it is not helpful. And it serves no one, especially those at greatest risk.”
Marlys Hayner, 88, and Kathy Roberts, 67, made the trip from Vandalia to attend the meeting. Both agreed with Kemme and Boyajian that the bill could lead to a “slippery slope,” and Hayner, a longtime Right to Life supporter, said it reminds her of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on abortion in Roe v. Wade.
“We have a very active Right to Life movement there now,” Hayner said of Vandalia. “We’re going to the other end of life, and the same thing is going to happen.”
“It’s a scary thing to think where it’s going with insurance companies getting on board with all of this and unethical doctors,” Roberts said.
Additionally, Roberts said she’s worried about doctors like Boyajian being forced to compromise their perceived duties as physicians if the bill passes.
They also expressed their concerns regarding the potential for coercion under the bill, especially when it comes to more vulnerable patients like those who are disabled.
“You can’t play God,” Roberts said.
“And there’s a commandment that says, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’” Hayner said.
At the end of the meeting, Kemme urged concerned residents to ask their state legislators to vote against the bill, and she said anyone looking for more information on the matter can visit stopassistedsuicideillinois.org or praf.org.