Assisted Suicide is suicide.

Surprisingly, this needs to be stated because proponents of assisted suicide are trying to redefine the term.

Physician-assisted suicide (PAS) is the act of a doctor or other medical professional intentionally helping someone else end his or her own life, usually by prescribing lethal doses of medication. With PAS, the suffering person administers the medication to themselves. With euthanasia, the physician directly administers the lethal medication to the other person. Both are acts that end a human life.

Proponents of assisted suicide use euphemisms to echo compassion. You will hear the phrase “medical aid in dying,” which is shortened to the innocent-sounding acronym MAID. You will hear “compassionate option” or “end-of-life options.” Indeed, a major proponent of this type of suicide is called Compassion & Choices. Death with Dignity is another proponent organization, whose very name warps the word “dignity.”

The Catholic Church teaches that assisted suicide and euthanasia are always gravely wrong. Human life is a gift from God and is, thus, sacred and worthy of protection. Secular arguments also make the case against assisted suicide. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote:

“To sanction the taking of innocent human life is to contradict a primary purpose of law in an ordered society. A law or court decision allowing assisted suicide would demean the lives of vulnerable patients and expose them to exploitation by those who feel they are better off dead. Such a policy would corrupt the medical profession, whose ethical code calls on physicians to serve life and never to kill. The voiceless or marginalized in our society — the poor, the frail elderly, racial minorities, millions of people who lack health insurance — would be the first to feel pressure to die.”

In states and countries where assisted suicide is legal, insurance companies are already refusing to cover costly life-saving treatments and are instead pushing the ill to take the least costly approach: life-ending drugs.

This winter, a draft bill legalizing assisted suicide in Illinois has been circulating around the Illinois General Assembly. Legislative experts expect the bill to be finalized and introduced into either the state Senate or the House early this month.

The Diocese of Rockford through the Catholic Conference of Illinois, the public policy arm of the six Illinois bishops, has joined in the Stop Assisted Suicide Illinois coalition to oppose the legislation. The coalition includes a diverse group of organizations:  Access Living, the Illinois chapter of Agudath Israel of America, the Catholic Conference of Illinois, the Illinois Catholic Health Association, and the Progress Center for Independent Living.

All good people want to treat everyone, especially the terminally ill and marginalized, with dignity and compassion. When pain and depression lead a terminally ill patient to consider suicide, we need to offer relief from those problems instead of helping the suffering kill themselves. We offer such help to able-bodied people who suffer from depression. We need this same public health priority in patients with a lingering illness. Pain management and reconsideration of particular life-sustaining treatments can be morally justified, according to Church teaching, when the intent is not to kill the patient.

Assisted suicide is not compassionate. Treatment of depression, relieving pain, and offering other supportive care in morally justifiable ways — these efforts are, as John Paul II said, “the way of love and true mercy.”

Call or text the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 for 24/7, free, and confidential help if you are in distress or if you need resources for you or your loved ones.