Major Illinois hospital system refuses to participate in assisted suicide

Advocate Health Care announced that it will not participate in the euphemistically named “Medical Aid in Dying” law. The system operates 11 hospitals in addition to other facilities throughout the state.

“After an extensive and careful review, Advocate Health has determined we will not participate in MAID at our facilities, employed practices or as part of our programs and services,” reads an announcement.

When @GovPritzker‘s Assisted Suicide bill goes into effect in September, Advocate Health will NOT be participating. If you have a disabled or elderly loved one who becomes ill, you can safely take them to Advocate for care. pic.twitter.com/ri3YfgplSr

— Mary H. FioRito (@maryfiorito) July 7, 2026

The law allows patients diagnosed with an allegedly terminal illness deemed to have less than six months to live to commit assisted suicide.

The bill requires the patient to make the request to end their life both verbally and in writing and to repeat their request verbally at least five days after their first request.

A spokesperson for the End Assisted Suicide Coalition praised Advocate Health for its decision. The group is suing the state over its law.

“We are extremely pleased that the Advocate Health Care System which covers a good portion of Illinois is opting out of the Illinois assisted suicide law,” Barbara Lyons told LifeSiteNews via email. “The Illinois Coalition Against Assisted Suicide, a coalition that I spearhead, has sent letters to every health care system in Illinois citing the rationale for opting out and requesting that they do so.”

She said “it is critical that health care systems and physicians opt out” in order to protect patients.

“Other health care systems, most of them religiously affiliated, have opted out of the law and we are hoping that the addition of the Advocate Health Care System will encourage other systems to join in this effort,” Lyons said.

The Chicago Tribune previously reported on hospital systems that opted out of the law soon after Pritzker signed it.

“OSF HealthCare, Ascension and Hospital Sisters Health System all say they will not take part in,” the Tribune reported on Dec. 19, 2025.

“OSF HealthCare is saddened to hear that Governor Pritzker signed SB 1950 into law,” the system stated at the time. “As a Catholic health ministry, OSF is guided by honoring the dignity of every human person and we will not participate in or support any form of physician-assisted suicide. These practices are fundamentally inconsistent with our Mission to serve with the greatest care and love.”

Ascension and Hospital Sisters are also Catholic-aligned healthcare systems.

Throughout the process, the law has been tainted by controversy.

The law initially failed to clear the General Assembly, which is dominated by Democrats. Instead, supporters snuck it into an unrelated bill on food preparation, as LifeSiteNews previously reported.

Left-wing Governor J.B. Pritzker signed the law on December 12 last year, despite being specifically asked by Pope Leo XIV to veto it during an earlier meeting at the Vatican.

“After Pope Leo received Governor Pritzker in a lengthy private meeting, Pritzker said they discussed shared concerns about ‘vulnerable people.’ Now Pritzker’s making Assisted Suicide legal In Illinois. And, adding insult to injury, he’s doing it on Our Lady of Guadalupe’s feast day,” pro-life advocate Mary FioRito wrote at the time.

The Catholic Church condemns assisted suicide as comparable to murder.

The Catholic Church teaches that suicide or the intentional ending of one’s own life is gravely evil, as man is not the author of his own life. “Intentional euthanasia, whatever its forms or motives, is murder. It is gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 2324) affirms.