Since the beginning of the 21st century, most European governments have promoted progressive laws to accompany the "evolution of customs" and society.
The law on abortion has been constantly modified to extend its legal term. Marriage, as well as adoption, has been opened to same-sex couples, changing the definitions of "family" and "parents". Increasingly, the words "mother" and "father" are replaced in official documents by "parent 1" and "parent 2" or even by "legal representative".
The authorization of assisted procreation for female couples has eliminated the existence of a biological father on birth certificates. Surrogate mothers, surrogacy or surrogate motherhood are accepted by some activists, who suggest that children born from a "parental project" are more wanted than those born from an "unwanted pregnancy".
The individualistic and progressive society continues to destroy the traditional family, with a father and a mother, to promote more and more individual rights that reflect the desires of each person.
Euthanasia as a right
Continuing this "inevitable evolution" of society, the French Parliament has been debating since early February 2024 the creation of a right to assisted suicide and euthanasia, thus questioning the legitimacy of the moral prohibition of inflicting death, since euthanasia and assisted suicide are two different ways of dealing with suffering by administering death.
The basic idea of this debate is to proclaim that each individual is free to decide his or her own "end of life" and that the authorities have no choice but to adapt common morality to the wishes and demands of each individual. By becoming a choice, death questions the very definition of medicine and its role in society.
Medicine, from the Latin medicine 'remedy', the noble science of health, is the art of preventing and curing diseases. Its mission is to offer remedies, to cure, heal, heal and protect. The physician is first and foremost the one who takes care of us and our suffering. When euthanasia becomes a medical procedure, the physician becomes the one who takes the life of others.
Killing as a "medical act?
Can suicide or euthanasia be considered medical procedures? Should physicians really inflict death on debilitated, vulnerable or threatened patients when they should be protecting them? Should death become a therapeutic means to alleviate suffering?
Some activists proclaim the need and the right to "die with dignity," to be able to choose a "gentle" and "dignified" death, a death that literally possesses an eminent value, an excellence that should inspire respect. In what sense is ceasing to live estimable or honorable? These militants propose euthanasia and assisted suicide as medical procedures to treat suffering, thus instrumentalizing the pain of the incurably ill, whose justifiable and respectable desire to stop suffering cannot be criticized or judged.
However, the question of the right to euthanasia raises the question of death as a treatment against suffering, and subsequently against any kind of suffering....
Today, all countries that have legalized euthanasia, such as Belgium and Canada, within a very strict legal framework, have expanded the reasons to include any psychic and psychological suffering, without any degenerative or disabling physical pathology, to decide to end one's life, and this also applies to children under 1 year old....
The common thread running through everything one can read about the "end of life" and the need for euthanasia is the total absence of hope, and ultimately what is being discussed is rather the place and treatment in our Western societies of illness, suffering and despair.
Loneliness, despair and suffering isolate people, make them fragile and vulnerable and, above all, make hope and courage disappear in everyone.
Man, a social animal, needs others and was not created for pain, anguish, suffering or death, but for joy, love and life.
The value of trust
The relationship between a patient and his physician is largely based on mutual trust, because the latter is the one who helps and not the one who harms. This trust is confirmed by the Hippocratic oath, which comes to us from ancient Greece and which every physician must proclaim and not betray, on pain of being expelled from the College of Physicians. In pronouncing it, physicians take an oath never to "deliberately cause death". The Declaration of Geneva, on the other hand, makes those they treat promise to ensure "absolute respect for human life". Wouldn't the idea of doctors injecting poison to stop the hearts of those they are supposed to protect be a violation of these two oaths?
One could also denounce the hypocrisy of this debate through the very notion of "assisted suicide," which transforms the solitary action of a desperate person committing suicide into a collective action with a third party present, assisting and helping....
Activists barely mention the ethics of medicine, constantly foregrounding the urgency of privileging "the evolution of society," individual choice to the detriment of the preservation of human life and the common good.
The neutral and muted expression "end of life" increasingly replaces that of death, thus evacuating the fundamental opposition between life, the spontaneous activity proper to organized beings, and death, the total and definitive absence of activity.
For them, death should become a right, because to have a right to euthanasia is literally to have a 'right to die'. Right, from the Low Latin directum, refers to 'what is just.' Is death just? Can it be a right? Is it a right to die with dignity, and therefore should the right to life be justified? And what should we say to those who continue to wait despite their suffering, should we discourage them by explaining to them that the right thing for them and for society would be to disappear and go away, that the world would be better off without them because they suffer too much?
For believers, suffering and death, original sin, have been redeemed by the Passion of Christ. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ brings hope in life after death, in eternal life, in God's mercy and love for all.
As all the faithful repeat at Mass: "safe from every trouble, waiting for the blessed hope to be fulfilled," this hope is precisely that of heavenly bliss where, reunited with God, there will be no more suffering, pain or death.
Death is final, terrible and absolute; it cannot and should not be considered an advance in medicine. Accepting death does not mean accepting to inflict it. The sixth commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," has no extenuating circumstances, even if the advocates of euthanasia claim that death becomes mercy.
Is this showing compassion and accompanying those who suffer? Jesus tells each one to carry his cross, He does not say to leave it because it would be too heavy, but as the talents is within our reach and with Him we can have the strength of faith, of hope....
