Illinois is poised to become the 13th state in the U.S. to give terminally ill people an avenue to end their lives with the help of a doctor, now that a suburban state Senator's bill legalizing the process has received final approval in the state Legislature.
Aurora state Senate Democrat Linda Holmes says her interest in this issue started when she was a teenager, and her father died of lung cancer.
"That's a very difficult way to go, said Sen. Holmes (42nd District). "You see a vibrant six-foot-tall man waste away to 90-something pounds in the span of three and a half months."
Her mother later died of pancreatic cancer ... and for the last two years, she's worked to pass a bill that she says will give some measure of control to a person who two doctors have confirmed has fewer than six months to live.
"It's the person themselves that wants it, it's the person themselves that administers the medication," Sen. Holmes says, noting that she's added numerous safeguards designed to prevent people from being coerced into ending their lives.
"I always said this would be the last bill I ever carried 'cause I thought it was so controversial that if I ever passed it I'd never get elected again," she said, while pointing to surveys and feedback from constituents showing public support for end-of-life measures.
"People don't want to watch their loved ones suffer," she said.
But Barbara Lyons from the Patients Rights Action Fund says the provisions in the bill are not strong enough to prevent people from being coerced into ending their lives.
"It puts very vulnerable people at risk - most certainly those with disabilities and older people," Lyons said, while citing cases in other states in which young women with anorexia and other non-terminal illnesses were prescribed end-of-life drugs.
"Those are the types of people that we're concerned about, and no matter what Senator Holmes says, will not be protected from the law that just passed in Illinois," she said.
Her group is calling for expansion of hospice and similar care to make patients' lives more comfortable.
Governor Pritzker is expected to sign the end-of-life bill into law.