(LifeSiteNews) – The Illinois Senate ended October by quietly giving final legislative approval to a measure that would legalize physician-assisted suicide by sneaking its language into an unrelated bill.

Live Action reported that standalone legalization legislation failed to make it through either Democrat-controlled chamber of the state legislature earlier in the year, but activists had greater success smuggling it into an unrelated bill on food sanitary preparation rules. The amendment to the bill, passed previously in the state House and now the Senate as well, states that “Medical aid in dying is part of general medical care and complements other end-of-life options, such as comfort care, pain control, palliative care, and hospice care.”

It now goes to the desk of Democrat Gov. JB Pritzker for final signature.

“This proposal would legalize the abandonment of the desperate, dressing suicide as ‘dignity’ while the state and conniving doctors washes their hands of the duty to protect life. My heart breaks for every soul in such pain that death seems the only door,” warned Calvin Lindstrom, pastor of Church of Christian Liberty in Arlington Heights. “May God’s people bring a witness of true hope in the face of death.”

Despite Pritzker’s extreme pro-abortion bias, the fact that even Democrat-controlled chambers did not support the original upfront version of legalization provides hope that the governor will find the move politically untenable if enough public attention is marshalled. The Illinois Family Institute is urging residents to email the governor through this link to urge him to veto the bill.

Ten U.S. states plus the District of Columbia currently allow assisted suicide. If this bill is signed, Illinois will become the 11th. Legalization bills are also currently being considered in Montana and New York.

As Patients Rights Action Fund (PRAF) executive director Matt Vallière has argued, current euthanasia programs in the United States constitute discrimination against patients with life-threatening conditions in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, as when a state will “will pay for every instance of assisted suicide” but not palliative care, “I don’t call that autonomy, I call that eugenics.”

Live Action’s Bridget Sielicki further noted that “because a paralytic is involved, a person can look peaceful, while they actually drown to death in their own bodily secretions. Experimental assisted suicide drugs have led to the ‘burning of patients’ mouths and throats, causing some to scream in pain.’ Furthermore, a study in the medical journal Anaesthesia found that a third of patients took up to 30 hours to die after ingesting assisted suicide drugs, while four percent took seven days to die.”

Support is available to talk to those struggling with thoughts of ending their lives. The Suicide & Crisis Lifeline can be reached by calling or texting 988.