A group of Muslim doctors is suing Illinois over a state law mandating that doctors inform patients about assisted suicide options, claiming the controversial law violates their constitutionally protected religious rights.
Illinois passed the End-of-Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act last year despite pushback from medical and religious groups, allowing terminally ill residents of the Prairie State to seek assisted suicide. The law, which went into effect earlier this month, allows doctors to opt out of performing the assisted suicide procedures but requires doctors to tell patients about those options and thus still participate in some parts of the process.
The lawsuit, filed by four Muslim doctors and backed by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, claims the law violates their sincerely held Islamic belief against assisted suicide by forcing them to inform and facilitate the practice or face fines and other penalties.
The law still requires doctors who opt out for religious reasons to “inform terminal patients about the ‘legal treatment’ of
suicide, including its ‘benefits,’” according to the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois earlier this week. Lawyers for the Muslim doctors claim the exemptions “are also among the narrowest in the nation,” noting that states including California, Washington, and Oregon allow doctors to opt out completely of assisted suicide for religious reasons.
“In passing the Act, Illinois has stripped that very choice away from Plaintiffs and their patients—denying the choice of a dignified death to the many residents of Illinois who, following their sincere religious beliefs, wish to die naturally, secure in the knowledge that they will not be urged by their physicians to consider cutting short their life through suicide,” the lawsuit from the Muslims doctors said, urging the federal court to strike down the law.
The four Muslim doctors each said they believe the law forces them to make an impossible choice between continuing to do their job lawfully and following their religious and personal beliefs.
“I became a doctor because I felt called to heal those in pain. I cannot betray that calling—or my Muslim faith—by pushing patients down the path of suicide,” Dr. Omar Hussain, a pulmonary specialist in Libertyville, Illinois, and one of the four doctors suing the state over the law, said in a statement. “The court should ensure that Muslim doctors like me may keep serving our neighbors without violating our religious convictions.”
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While the lawsuit filed earlier this week was brought by Muslim doctors, healthcare professionals of other faiths have also expressed concern and filed lawsuits against the controversial Illinois law. Earlier this month, a federal judge ordered the state not to enforce the law against a group of Catholics over their religious objections to assisted suicide.
Assisted suicide for terminally ill people has become legalized in several states in recent years, despite fierce pushback from mostly religious groups ranging in faith from Catholics to Muslims, who have moral objections to voluntarily ending life.