Illinois Governor Pritzker signs assisted suicide bill giving doctors the right to poison patients to death.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Pritzger signing a bill.

I have terrible dark news.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has signed assisted suicide bill SB 9 into law. The law will go into effect on September 12, 2026.

Thank you to the many people who lobbied and shared their stories with the hope of preventing the legalization of assisted suicide. Your promotion of caring but not killing people will not be forgotten.

Let me be clear, legalizing assisted suicide is about poisoning people to death.

Assisted suicide Bill SB9 passed on April 9, 2025 by a vote of 8 to 3 in the Senate Executive Committee. SB9 stalled but restarted when the sponsor gutted the Sanitary Food Preparation Act (SB 1950) and replaced it with the assisted suicide bill. 

It is ironic that a bill that enables physicians to prescribe lethal poison to kill patients was attached to a food preparation safety bill.

Once assisted suicide is legal, the assisted suicide lobby will work to expand the law. The original assisted suicide bill was designed to pass in the legislature. Once passed incremental extensions will follow.

It is possible that Pritzker only delayed signing the bill because he was scheduled to meet the Pope.

We will not stop working to prevent the killing of people at the most vulnerable time of their life.