TODAY: The Illinois Senate is trying a last-minute effort to ram through a bill to legalize medical aid in dying (MAID) in Illinois.  MAID is also known as physician-assisted suicide. The bill, SB 1950, would focus on creating an option for doctors to provide lethal medicine for patients who they determine have six months or less to live, based on the patient's request for such medicine. Access Living has long opposed assisted suicide given its inherent risks to people with disabilities, for many reasons.

Because of widespread physician bias against people with disabilities, as well as the many barriers to healthcare faced by disabled people of color in particular, Access Living has significant doubts about whether physician-assisted suicide would be a meaningful choice for disabled Illinoisans. People with disabilities are already more likely to deal with stigma, neglect, abuse of all kinds, and face significant barriers to readily accessing pain management and home services that can make significant disability easier to manage. The risk of implicit and explicit coercion is very real, as is the concern of whether doctors who prescribe MAID would be violating their oath to do no harm. 

 RIGHT NOW, we need as many people as possible to let their Illinois state senators know that legalizing assisted suicide is not okay.  This issue is literally about life and death.  Please take action today.