Last updated on April 27th, 2021 at 09:01 am
Last week, the proposal put forth by left-wing deputy Olivier Falorni to legalize euthanasia in France was wrecked thanks to the shrewd action of the parliamentary opposition. Three thousand amendments were filed ahead of the debate which slowed down proceedings to the point of making a vote an impossibility.
Whoever hurts from quibbles, perishes from regulations. Indeed, it is a quibble to make the claim that killing a person is a “good death”. It is a quibble to think that resolving the pain and difficulty of a person comes by killing that person. And it is a quibble to call collaboration in the death of a person “assisted suicide”.
But the biggest quibble of all is to affirm that euthanasia is a right because a person can do what he/she wants with his/her life. In this case, the quibble is a sophism; a sensational lie formulated in such a way as to plunge the interlocutor into confusion.
Persons, in fact, do not own their own life at all. If they possessed it, they would know how to control it. For example, a person would know how to give it to themselves. But, despite all the aberrations of science today and ones we can only imagine for tomorrow, man does not give life by himself and does not know how to give it. Life always comes from others – namely, parents – and this can be said even in a totally secular and radical language, that is without taking into account, here, any other consideration on creation, soul and God.
The man values life as much as a dry fig. He does not know whence it originates. On this account, he invents many lies. But the only thing he can do is to acknowledge that life exists before and in spite of himself. He, therefore, honors and favors it, or manipulates and suppresses it. But he never creates it.
We do not create life; neither ours nor that of others. And this is because, right from day one, we do not possess life. If we do not own our life, then we cannot dispose of it. We cannot suppress it. We can do it on the material level, but it is intrinsically forbidden to us on the level of an ethics that is exquisitely secular. We have the task, the joy and the duty to administer to it, to guard it, protect it and return it at the right time to the Owner. Man should assume the responsibility of believing in what he wants. But man cannot keep his life; some day, it will have to be returned to the Owner.
We have no “right” to kill ourselves. There is no “right” in euthanasia, because the life that we would thus eliminate is not our property. Our lives must be given back… returned, in due time.
If they lend you a car, do not in the least dream of smashing it. The vehicle, In your stead, must be cared for and used accordingly. And it must be returned in the best shape possible. Otherwise, the lender will sue you for damages against your assets.
If this works for a machine, why shouldn’t it work first and foremost for human life?
You cannot kill with abortion because you do not own the lives of others. And one cannot commit suicide, not even embellish one’s language, because none of us own our own life.
I am always filled with a profound sense of pleasure when those dry quibbles and sterile regulations that feed on our positivist culture and delight in our legalistic world lend themselves, out of serendipity, to shattering the lies of the “culture of death” into a sumptuous law of retaliation.
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