Illinois just gave the state the authority to sanction who gets a lethal prescription and when, becoming the 13th state to legalize medically assisted death under the banner of "compassion."
"Deb's law" took effect September 12, making Illinois the first Midwestern state to authorize doctors to prescribe lethal medication to terminally ill patients. New York recently passed similar legislation. The accelerating pace raises a question the establishment press won't touch: who profits when the state makes it cheaper to die than to live?
The law is named after Deb Robertson, 68, who was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive cancer and lobbied Springfield lawmakers to legalize the option. "I believe that people have the right to leave this Earth with dignity and on their own terms," Robertson said, according to the Associated Press.
But disability advocates see a different picture entirely. Ebony Payne, a Chicago-based quadriplegic advocate and plaintiff in a lawsuit against the law, warned plainly: "It puts people like myself — people with developmental and mental disabilities, as well as physical disabilities — in danger." Payne's lawsuit contends the law discriminates against people with disabilities. The danger isn't theoretical — when the state blesses death as a medical option, the pressure on the vulnerable to choose it is real, especially in a system where insurance companies hold the purse strings.
Pope Leo XIV personally urged Gov. JB Pritzker not to sign the bill and later said he was "very disappointed" that his home state approved it. Polls show most Americans consider medical aid in dying morally acceptable or not a moral issue, though opinions split along faith and political lines.
Dr. Jessica Kaan, medical director for End of Life Washington, has helped hundreds of patients end their lives and frames it as pure autonomy: "I respect that people don't want to choose that as an option for themselves. What I don't love is for people trying to police that for other people." Kaan's mother, a practicing Christian, opposes her work: "She's horrified that I'm involved in any way."
Both the Mercury News and WTOP ran the same AP dispatch, leading with Robertson's emotional journey and framing the law as a milestone of personal liberation. The disability rights lawsuit and the structural incentives that make death the cheap option got buried beneath the human-interest narrative.
The reporting also glosses over the financial architecture. End of Life Washington is an advocacy group that exists to expand these laws. Pharmaceutical companies manufacture the lethal prescriptions. Insurance providers save money every time a patient chooses a pill over palliative care. Nobody with a profit motive is lobbying against this.
The question isn't whether Deb Robertson deserves compassion. It's whether a system run by hospital administrators, insurance actuaries, and pharmaceutical manufacturers can be trusted to offer death as a choice without it becoming the cheapest one.
