On December 8, 2025, CEO and President of Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee (CWALAC) Penny Nance sent letters, on behalf of our members, to New York Governor Kathy Hochul and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker urging them to veto their states’ respective physician-assisted suicide (PAS) bills ahead of the New Year.
Physician-assisted suicide (PAS), known euphemistically to advocates as Medical Aid in Dying (MAID) or “Death with Dignity,” describes a practice where physicians prescribe a lethal dose of drugs intended to end the life of a patient. The practice is legal in eleven states and Washington, D.C., and PAS legislation is under consideration in seventeen state delegations.
If the Governors fail to veto the bills on their desks, New York and Illinois will become the twelfth and thirteenth states to legalize physician-assisted suicide.
Dissent is urgent: Gov. Hochul must veto by midnight, December 31, and in Illinois, PAS legislation will become law if Gov. Pritzker does not veto by January 24, 2026. PAS advocates are sure to be shoving pro-suicide talking points down Gov. Hochul’s throat: they claim that PAS is “compassionate,” promotes “autonomy” and “choice,” and offers “death with dignity” to the terminally ill.
In her letter to Gov. Pritzker, Penny Nance wrote:
Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee (CWALAC) is the nation’s largest public policy organization for women. We have robust grassroots in the state of Illinois, and as daughters, sisters, mothers, and grandmothers, we urge you to veto SB 1950, with specific attention to the physician-assisted suicide amendment: “End of Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients.” Though physician-assisted suicide is framed by some as “compassion,” “choice,” and “death with dignity,” this legislation will disadvantage vulnerable, terminally ill Illinoisans, among them our constituents.
Physician-assisted suicide violates patient trust and physician integrity, offends the innate dignity and equality of all human beings regardless of their physical or mental state, normalizes suicide, disincentivizes public and private investment in palliative care options, and gives rise to a slippery slope where physician-assisted suicide may become available to the general public (consider Colorado, where anorexic women commit physician-assisted suicide).
Physician-assisted suicide is not “death with dignity.” It is cruelty to the terminally ill and convenience for financial stakeholders in the medical industry—a dead patient is cheaper than a living one. In a state where physician-assisted suicide becomes the norm, palliative care, elder care, and dignified end-of-life care may become less common. Here, death loses dignity and gains a price tag.
Real death with dignity is 1) embracing human life until its natural end, 2) diligent pain management in terminal patients’ final days or hours, 3) ensuring every suffering person of their inherent worth and dignity despite a terminal diagnosis, and 4) innovations and investments in high-quality palliative care, hospice, and in-home care.
Illinois must remain steadfast to the historic Hippocratic Oath, where doctors promise, “I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan.” To maintain real death with dignity for all Illinois residents, I urge you to veto SB 1950.
See Penny Nance’s letter to Governor Hochul on our website.
As CWALAC urges Govs. Hochul and Pritzker to veto their PAS bills, please pray that their hearts, and the hearts of all Illinoisans and New Yorkers, would be softened to defend the sanctity of human life in their states from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death. Elderly and terminally ill men and women are not burdens to be disposed of. They are men and women created in the Image of God.
