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A few distinctions: It's aid in dying - not suicide. You are most certainly dying, have a terminal diagnosis and make an informed decision to self-administer a medication that will hasten death. The MD does not administer the medication, only writes the order for the medication. Some conditions are chronic but do not cause death on their own and these conditions do not qualify. Consider severe pain, skin conditions, mental health disorders, these would not qualify for aid in dying because by themselves they are not terminal diseases.

Please consider diseases that are terminal and cause incredible suffering: ALS, COPD, pulmonary fibrosis. liver fibrosis, cardiac and renal failure, MS, Parkinson's, advanced cancers. Often times pain medication does not relieve suffering. This is where medical aid in dying would be a compassionate choice an individual can make along with their loved ones and medical team.

The personal liberties thing is a lie. It always has been. 

When Christian theocracy and liberty clash, Republicans come down on the same side every single time.

Because life is sacred blah, blah, blah.

Spent a career in medicine and see it as a final act of compassion.

The GOP is not the party of “personal liberties”, they are the party of authoritarian control. Everything they do is performative or based on wedge issues that can help get them elected. They say a lot about personal liberty, but as with anything, you have to watch what they do, not what they say, and right now “The Right” is leaning really far to the right.

One of The Right’s wedge issues is “life”. They don’t really believe in life or at least they don’t believe in people having good lives, as much of what they enact or promote is closer to encouraging death or suffering related. (Capital punishment, family separation, beat downs by police, supporting pedophiles, pardoning literally dangerous criminals, taking away food from the poor, etc. I could literally go on for longer than my fingers would last)

To answer your question, because they wedge “life”, they make the terminally ill suffer needlessly by making sure it’s illegal for them to end their own lives. This position helps make the GOP on the surface appear to be moral and in support of “life”, since suicide is traditionally looked down upon by many religious voters.

The Republican party does not care about personal liberties. In fact they are relentless in their push to go ever deeper into the private lives of citizens.

Personal liberties, when conservatives say it, mean THEIR liberties, not YOURS.

Strongly suggest watching the documentary How to Die in Oregon. It's around 25 years old but it is so thought provoking and well done.

Not a single top level comment so far was made by an actual right wing person, just leftists putting up straw men.

Here’s an actual answer: similar systems in Canada and Europe have been subject to abuse and expansion beyond the original terminal scope of MAID. Canada instituted MAID in 2016 for terminal cases only. In 2021 they expanded it to “irredeemable conditions” that were not terminal. In 2027 mental health alone will be within the legal threshold of MAID in Canada. There’s criticism from both the left and right about how MAID primarily harms the poor and homeless suffering more from socioeconomic issues rather than medical ones. There have been multiple cases where people have applied and been accepted to the MAID program because they couldn’t find adequate housing. There are plenty of very legitimate studies and articles in medical journals criticizing the systems scope expansion.

In addition, the single payer healthcare system in Canada incentivizes MAID as a cost saving measure. Expensive, debilitating diseases can simply not be treated if the patient decides to die instead. Doctors have spoken out about practice standards that require the doctor to suggest MAID as opposed to waiting for the patient to initiate the conversation, which crosses an ethical red line.

So, just over the northern border we have a working example of MAID to study and see how scope creep and mixed incentives increase deaths beyond the fringe terminal. A conservative approach to a policy that is shown to be easily abused in scope in a case study so close to home is to not institute such a policy in the first place.

They don't believe in personal liberties. Also isn't it funny how they speak of entire groups of people as "subhuman", "the enemy within", etc, and then they try to virtue signal and claim they value life too much to allow an individual to make the decision to tap out

Right wingers will talk about liberties but actally don't give a shit about bodily autonomy. Any libertarians still fooling themselves the rest of the conservosphere listens to them don't coun't, they do not affect the movement at all.

No idea. I lean right for sure but opposing this over some religious angle or whatever is incredibly stupid. "God decides" doesn’t work since god isn’t the one sitting there rotting away with terminal cancer or whatever other horrible disease the patient has. It’s a personal decision amongst the patient and their family. Period.

There's a fear that it will be used to murder people who lack the capacity to make that decision. There's also a slippery slope argument where the state will have an influence on how long it will keep the terminally ill alive.

How will the drug companies, who make money by prolonging life no matter how miserable that life is, make up for the lost income?

Asking only because that's how the right thinks and acts.

Unless Im reading the voting record wrong, it looks like it passed the Illinois general assembly pretty easily, from both parties. So Im skeptical on “a lot of push back from the right”.

Only our masters get to decide who lives and who dies. If people start deciding for themselves whether they will live or die that is taking power away from the masters. No one takes power away from the masters.

Religious people are against suicide. Period. For others, it is very progressive to be okay with individuals seeking death, it is human nature to be anti suicide even if for a deadly and painful illness or sickness. 

So if you're a conservative, you probably believe people shouldn't give up on fighting. It also feels dystopian to supply it, so it is an uncomfortable topic for them. 

It also isn't just conservatives. You have people out there uncomfortable with the idea because it doesn't incentives medicine and therapy to expand since all would be target demographics are possibly gone. It is scary normalizing this idea that you just kill yourself and done. 

It’s because that opens up the door for coercion, euthanizing people that can’t give informed consent, suggesting it instead of actual treatment or palliative care to cut down on costs, and expanding it to depressed people. And that we should focus on making those who are terminally ill and suffering as comfortable as possible before they die. Yes it often does have to do with religion.

Before you come after me about the death penalty, no I do not support it at all. I strongly oppose it because it’s also taking the life of another human being

We are all subjects of the ideas we were sold as children. Some of us were sold the idea that preserving life at all costs (including taking life (think abortion clinic violence)) is the value to believe in at all costs....there was something of a nobility..but then like all things.. it got hijacked into something else. Now it's a rallying cry of the elites to ensure a cheap labor force.

For all their talk against "big government", and for personal freedom, the right actually demands state control over people's bodies, especially women's bodies. They demand that no one be allowed a free choice on when to end one's life, or to end an unwanted and undesirable pregnancy. They want control of people's sex lives and control over who is allowed to marry.

Right wingers are far from honest advocates of freedom. The only freedom they really want to exist is their personal freedom to dictate what others are allowed to do.

Hypocrites, all of them.

Christians are against suicide for the most part, me personally I’m not against laws like this.

Easy answer. The right are against it because the left supports it…. Hard answer. The right gets large financial contributions from some PACS, where the money originates from the large wealthy Evangelical organizations.. and (incorrectly) some Christians believe suicide is an unforgivable sin. Complicated answer. The truth is all (left and right) our elected representatives only help the largest wealthiest contributors. You don’t donate millions then you don’t count! Until it’s election time.. then we fill your ears and souls with the propaganda needed to win your vote!

GOP doesn’t support individual rights anymore. They support their own rights. 

They think the only right to die is at the hands of the state. Monsters. 

You know who also had assisted suicide? Ill give you a guess, and let's just say Steven Spielberg wouldn't be very popular there

Personally I'm left on most issues and this one issue is not going to change my vote on election day (well I don't live in Illinois, but even if I did I'd still vote for Democrats).

But I disagree with euthanasia. Here's why:

Meaning comes from the ability to exercise agency or autonomy. As Kant noted death takes that away, which is why Kant said that ending one's own life is not morally permissible.

Even if you believe in an afterlife it takes away agency and autonomy from within this life.

So limiting autonomy by banning euthanasia helps protect autonomy on the whole.

People will bring up terminal illness, but there's always that small chance that the doctors were wrong or the model suggesting the patient has no chance just turns out to be wrong that time, even if the facts would normally point to terminal illness. There was one person, just one person who ever survived rabies. The procedure that saved them never worked on another person. What if they had written a living will and euthanasia on those grounds had been allowed then they would have died when they could have lived.

Or some new experimental treatment works. Take diabetes for example. In the 1920s sick often unconscious children expected to die soon perked back up after being given insulin, and many lived to adulthood. What if euthanasia had been legal back then and like it is in some places parents were allowed to consent on behalf of their unconscious children? Many of those children who were saved would have died.

Now they're finding a potential gene therapy cure for Huntington's Disease, though this is still being developed. How many people with that disease died in places that permit euthanasia who could have been saved? How many still are who could live, be cured, and live a happy life after that?

Furthermore euthanasia takes away an opportunity to save others as even if a treatment doesn't save you it could still provide important data that saves other people's lives. If you stay alive you can seek new experimental treatments. I'm not saying you or your caregiver should feel any pressure to try any of them. And caregivers should make these decisions thinking of what is best for the person under their care. But if you euthanize then that opportunity isn't there, not to save the patient or to save other patients.

Adding to these points legal euthanasia risks putting pressure on terminally ill people, the elderly, and the disabled to pursue euthanasia. It risks normalizing this and turning into a slippery slope that leads to this becoming mandatory or to care being denied with people being strongly encouraged to pursue euthanasia. In fact this has already happened.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_in_Canada:

"The intensity and breadth of Canada's MAID program has led to condemnation of its program by UN human rights experts and disability rights groups in Canada."

And the issue of euthanasia speaks to a larger more philosophical one. Too many people are acting like the meaning of life is to avoid suffering. That doesn't work. If you make everything about avoiding suffering that's not the basis of a stable society or a flourishing humanity. Humanity flourishes when humanity exercises agency both at the level of the individual and at collective levels. We would not be here if our ancestors prioritized just avoiding suffering over all else.

GOP is not the party of personal liberties. See: abortion, lgbtq, palantir, divorce, birth control, etc.

Because insurance and pharma companies have a stronger hold on republicans and a dead person doesn’t accrue or pay medical bills.

1. There is the whole bit about how life is sacred and an innocent life is only God’s to take. (And other similar religious rationales).

2. There is also a fear that doctor assisted suicides are inherently risky because of issues of occasional inability to fully have informed consent. I think there were some issues with Canada’s system which were probably exaggerated and written without context, but which made many people, including non-conservatives, kinda hesitant about the idea

Because Pritzker supports it. They hate it because a Democrat did it. That's it. Republicans have demonized Democrats and Liberals to the point where anything they do is considered pure evil by the Republican voters. If a Republican came up with this, they would support it.

The answer is simple. The right automatically opposes anything the left supports. They need culture war outrage to keep the base involved. That's why the right looks so foolish on issues like vaccines or fonts.

The right has watched similar programs in other places slowly turn into "you're encouraged to kill yourself" programs. Anyone sufficiently burdensome on the state becomes an excellent candidate for it. Canada's MAID program is the prime example.

"Life is Sacred" is a key to the Religious Right. This is why they are opposed to Abortion despite Abortion being a highly personal medical procedure that you would expect conservatives to shy away from involving themselves with. To them the unborn fetus's Right to Life exceeds the Mother's Right to Personal Privacy and Medical Treatment. Likewise, they believe that an individual's Life is Sacred, and even an individual does not have the Right to take their own life and end it. Their life is so sacred it exceedes their Right to choose what to make of that life.

In their conception God, the creators of all things and to whom all praise and worship is rightful directed, has ordained that no one shall commit murder-- whether that is of another person, of an unborn fetus, or themselves. Life was created by the almighty sacred God, the God that designed and made all people, so its not for Humans to destroy except for in extreme situations. A person dying of a disease is living out exactly what was planned for them by their Creator, and that while Death itself is not a bad thing the idea that Humans could preempt the Divine Plan by hastening death is repugnant to them. As a result you'll find Religious Conservatives will be almost in lock-step unison over the issue of Right to Death and Medically Assisted Suicide, but that they are almost entirely in-favor of Hospice and managed care which allows someone to die naturally and with dignity.