By Dan Russo
Editorial
On Sept. 12, 2026, Illinois’ new assisted suicide law will go into effect. In a message which appeared in a recent issue of The Observer, the newspaper for the Diocese of Rockford, Bishop David J. Malloy explained that Cardinal Blasé Cupich of Chicago and Pope Leo XIV both personally contacted the state’s governor to urge him not to sign the bill.
Bishop Malloy mentioned how the pope’s latest encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (Magnificent Humanity), addresses a bigger issue: the “growing modern threat to the very sacredness of our human nature.”
With the new law on the horizon, Bishop Malloy reminded everyone why assisted suicide is wrong.
“The dignity of human life we and every other person bears is a gift from God,” wrote the bishop. “It is sacred because we are sharing in his life, and we do not have the right to terminate that gift — ending our lives on our own terms. Even more, moments of such weakness and even suffering, even as we legitimately work to relieve them, are part of a full humanity. When our loved ones are close to death it is an opportunity for us to love them, to serve them, perhaps to be reconciled with them. Similarly, others have the chance to fulfill love and charity for us as we work with God’s love, waiting for him to call us to himself. However well intended, assisted suicide undermines human dignity. It puts pressure on the poor, the disabled, those who society judges as no longer productive, to dispense with the God-given gift of their life.”
“Illinois and New York recently joined 11 other states and the District of Columbia in allowing people with serious illnesses to end their lives with a doctor’s help. While most states still ban physician-assisted death, a majority of Americans see the practice as morally permissible or don’t consider it a moral issue,” according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.
One of the reasons for the increasing acceptance of things that used to be seen as morally unacceptable is that skilled wordsmiths have used language to transform how people think.
“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words,” wrote science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. “If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.”
At some point, leaders in the assisted suicide legalization movement focused on linguistics. They had to obscure the harsh truth expressed clearly in the traditional terminology.
The word suicide comes from two Latin root words — sui, roughly meaning “of oneself” and caedes, meaning “to kill or murder.” In 1999, a jury of average citizens convicted Dr. Jack Kevorkian of murder for his role in killing a patient. Now Pew reports that most average people seem to think this is okay. Why? The idea that physicians would “assist” in killing a patient when most have sworn, through the Hippocratic oath, to “do no harm” seems as illogical today as it did 30 years ago. Doctors aren’t supposed to help take life. Even if one could convince the public that doctors should be active participants in killing, the words assisted suicide are still too blunt to accomplish the thought adjustment advocates want.
Instead advocacy organizations like “Compassion and Choices,” started using the term “medical assistance in dying” or “medical aid in dying.” (MAID)
MAID is a clever euphemism that makes something bleak and immoral sound soft and benevolent. The language change helped foster a cultural shift that took place gradually, but now seems to be accelerating. Canada legalized assisted suicide in 2016. Just this month France passed national legislation that permits it and, in some cases, euthanasia. (“Assisted suicide” generally refers to a patient administering a lethal dose of medication provided by a physician him or herself. In contrast, the term euthanasia refers to situations where a physician or other third party directly administers the lethal dose, in part or in full.)
Advocates say there is no evidence assisted suicide laws can lead to mistakes, abuse or coercion of patients. The Patients Rights Action Fund says otherwise. Personal stories of those harmed by these laws are at patientsrightsaction.org. This group has evidence which proves that “providing some people with suicide prevention and others with suicide help makes no sense.”
After a string of previous failures in Iowa, assisted suicide legislation was again defeated in 2026. As the debate continues, one thing Catholic Iowans can do to help prevent the practice from spreading is to keep using the older, more direct language. It’s assisted suicide, not MAID. Sometimes it’s good to use polite language to help people understand difficult truth. In this case, we need to stay blunt.
Dan Russo, editor
