The introduction of physician-assisted suicide bills in both houses of the Illinois Legislature during this legislative session has opponents lending their voices and life examples to the cause against hastening death as a way to avoid suffering.
This is the second year in a row Illinois lawmakers are pushing the bill called the “End of Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act.” They scheduled the first public hearings on the bills beginning in February.
The two identical bills submitted at the Illinois Senate and House call for two doctors to ascertain a patient has six months or less to live and to evaluate the patient’s mental faculties and ability to self-administer lethal doses of drugs. The legislation also states that on the death certificate the cause of death would be the original diagnosis of the patient, not suicide, among other requirements.
The first version was introduced in February 2024 by state Sen. Linda Holmes, a Democrat from Chicago’s western suburbs. She told OSV News the issue was her passion, because she and her family saw her father suffer the ravages of terminal lung cancer, which was “a horrendous way to watch somebody die.”
Several people have joined the Illinois Conference of Catholic Bishops and Illinois Right to Life Action in opposing assisted suicide legalization, pointing to the value of life and the beauty in accompaniment.
Among them is Cori Salchert, a Sheboygan, Wisc., mother of eight adult children and two adopted seriously ill young children. Salchert said she was well-acquainted with suffering through serious, incapacitating illness and wanting to give up on life.
A Christian author and former obstetric hospice nurse, Salchert, 59, told OSV News that she had been suffering the effects of undiagnosed Lyme disease for decades when she hit a very low point in 2010.
“It was getting exhausting on every front; chronic pain is really mentally and emotionally debilitating,” said Salchert. “And when you have enough people saying, ‘I can’t help you’ … It is like, ‘OK, I’m done with this. If this is the way it’s going to be, I cannot live with it and I’m through.’ I was definitely there. And I had tried, as far as medication, to take too much, but because our bodies are fearfully and wonderfully made and are always striving for life, I vomited that all up.”
Salchert said after surviving the attempt, she decided that ending life to end suffering “was off the table” because it contradicted God. She added, “The worst was yet to come,” but she resolved to learn how to deal with the extreme difficulties, especially knowing she would not be as productive as she wanted to be.
Wayne Smith came to the same realization after trying to end his own life 32 years ago by jumping into Lake Michigan on a gray, cold, winter day in Chicago. He spoke at the first of a series of public hearings on the bills in Chicago on Feb. 21 and expressed gratitude for the life God gave him. Smith told OSV News he was grateful for converting to Catholicism where he met his “beautiful wife” and learned the value and “beauty of life.”
Smith, 80, was a legally blind photographer whose degenerative eye condition would worsen to inevitable blindness and effectively end a successful career. Used to a fast lifestyle, Smith spiraled into deep depression.
He explained that he tried hard to empty his lungs and submerge himself several times, but each time he opened his mouth he did not take in any of Lake Michigan’s icy waters. Frustrated, Smith, who was Jewish but called himself an atheist at the time, left.
Months later, after having therapy, Smith still contemplated another suicide attempt while sitting on the front steps of his home.
“A man was passing by and he said, ‘When I’m in trouble, I ask God for help,'” said Smith. “And he kept going. Well, I had never believed that. My real belief was either there is no God or that he certainly doesn’t have any interest in helping me. But at this point, everything else was pointless, so I got on the bus … to Temple Shalom.”
Smith said after convincing the guard to let him in to pray, he sat down not knowing what to do and simply asked God to help him. Then he waited, thinking a bright light would pierce the ceiling and he would hear the voice of God.
But “nothing,” he said. “So I decided that either God doesn’t exist or he isn’t going to help me. So I grabbed my cane and walked out of the temple, got out onto the street and within seconds I went from total despair to absolute joy. I mean, I just started shouting out loud, ‘Yes there is a God and I am Jewish!’ And I went skipping down the street.”
Smith said he could not explain what happened, nor his new found sense of inner-knowing. But what followed was a four-year conversion to the Catholic faith at a parish where he said he became a staunch pro-life advocate. Using his white cane while praying outside abortion clinics helped project a non-threatening presence and he was able to talk women and couples out of aborting their unborn children.
In 2020, Smith had another brush with death. Doctors told him there was nothing more they could do after 50 days in the hospital for a severe case of COVID-19. He received last rites, then on the day his wife went to the hospital to say her final goodbye, he got well, which the couple attributed to a miracle. Smith now runs a nonprofit website that seeks to accompany people through life’s difficulties.
Salchert too became heavily involved in pro-life work. In 2012, after entering a treatment program in Mexico for chronic and degenerative illnesses, Salchert’s inflammation issues were significantly reduced and she managed the symptoms better. Months later, she was able to realize a dream, since her early obstetric hospice nursing days, of fostering children who were targeted for abortion because of medically complex illnesses and short life expectancies.
The Salcherts took on a terminally ill newborn who lived for 50 days and then more children came. They have, so far, fostered nine children, adopting five of those, three of whom have passed away. The two living are Charlie, 10, who was not expected to live beyond 2, and Kassidy, 5, whom doctors expected would die within five months of birth.
Throughout the difficulties of her illness, which was finally diagnosed and treated in 2020, Salchert said her husband helped her recognize that if she was not so debilitated and consequently placed on disability, she would neither have been able to care for the fragile children, nor be with them in their final days.
Salchert, while accompanying her seriously ill children, is also caring for her recently ill mother and her husband who is being treated for stage three prostate cancer.
She reflected on God’s action in the midst of life’s difficult circumstances.
“His working them for good will take our small views of inconvenience and suffering, and create a deeper empathy; create a deeper compassion; create more patience and tenacity than you would have if everything was hunky-dory,” she said.
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