* Tribune…

A federal judge on Thursday denied disability rights advocates’ request to block an Illinois law going into effect this weekend that lets terminally ill patients obtain prescription medication to end their lives.

The ruling came in a federal lawsuit filed earlier this year by two disabled patients, a doctor and several disability and patients’ rights organizations. They allege the state’s End-of-Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act violates the Americans with Disabilities Act, which bars discrimination against people with disabilities; the Affordable Care Act, which regulates healthcare costs; and the plaintiffs’ equal protection under the 14th Amendment.

But in his 25-page decision, U.S. District Judge John J. Tharp rejected at least one of the plaintiffs’ arguments calling for a preliminary injunction to put the law on hold, disagreeing that doctors “will start inviting disabled patients to consider medical aid in dying” once the law takes effect. […]

The law takes effect Saturday. The lawsuit will continue, though Tharp dismissed Gov. JB Pritzker as a defendant. Plaintiffs now have 30 days to show why the rest of the suit shouldn’t be dismissed as well.

* From Judge Tharp’s order…

The Act exempts healthcare professionals from any duty to provide aid-in-dying care, states that a healthcare provider “may choose not to engage in aid-in-dying care,” and provides that “only willing healthcare professionals shall provide aid-in- dying care in accordance with the Act.” With this amount of discretion afforded to doctors, Ms. Payne cannot establish an immediate, imminent risk that all doctors will start inviting disabled patients to consider medical aid in dying. […]

Ms. Payne’s argument that the Act obliterates a doctor’s fiduciary duties rests on a belief that the end-of-life protocol for terminally ill patients is fundamentally incompatible with the mandate to “do no harm.” That is plainly the plaintiffs’ view, but the Act rests on different premises. Under the Act, prescribing life-ending medication to a defined class of terminally ill patients is not “harm”; it is “part of general medical care” and one option to “ease unnecessary pain and suffering.”