France without peace, struggling between a bill on bioethics that is literally aberrant and a dangerous attempt to reformulate secularism through the law on so-called “separatism”, has an appointment with procured death.
Together, with the law on “separatism” that arrives in the Senate April 8th, is a proposal to legalize one of the many oxymorons of our times, “assisted suicide”. Because, if suicide is the act of committing death by oneself, someone who needs external assistance in order to commit suicide stops doing it by himself. So, what is the name of that gesture, if the negligée of ‘assisted suicide’ does not cover its nakedness at all?
Tomorrow’s proposal is yet another: the fourth to be tabled in the French parliament. Fronting this bill is Olivier Falorni, deputy of the “Parti Radical de Gauche” (Radical Party of the Left).
In the April 5th edition of the French daily Le Figaro, writer Michel Houellebecq wrote that “a civilization that legalizes euthanasia loses the right to any respect”. Houellebecq goes on to propose that when supporters of euthanasia speak of “compassion”, “the lie is palpable” and that the explanation of the reasons put forward for the legalization proposal is “comical”.
Frankly, I care little about Houellebecq’s opinions as I care little about anyone’s opinions, starting with my own. In fact, with opinions, useless roads are paved. It is not opinions that make the difference, but the naked and raw reality of things. Killing the innocent and peddling it under the guise of charity for personal use is hatefully hypocritical. One might as well immediately legalize murder in all its frankness: after all, one can always find an opinion to wear a transparent negligée.
If, on the other hand, the associated life of men has always stigmatized the voluntary suppression of an innocent along with other crimes, it is because opinions are not what count, but the serious matter. All human association throughout the history of man is based on evident facts such as the fact that killing an innocent is evil. This stigma and others are the fence erected around the village to keep the monster away; if the fence is knocked down, the beast inexorably wreaks havoc until there is no one left in the village. For this reason, when Houellebecq says that a civilization that legalizes euthanasia loses the right to any respect, it does not express merely “an opinion”; one voice among an uproar of commentators. It repeats a truthful observation against which no opinion holds.
A civilization that legalizes the suppression of an innocent person is like a civilization that legalizes murder: it breaks down the fence and lets in the beast; ipso facto, losing the right to respect. And thus, not respecting the dignity of the villagers defended by the fence, it is not worthy of being considered on a human scale.
You don’t have to be a fan of the controversial and unsympathetic Houellebecq to see that if France one day approves “assisted suicide”, France will stop deserving respect. Exactly as the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg no longer deserve it where “assisted suicide “is the law of the land. Not because Houellebecq says so, even though the obvious become more flashy when flashy people repeat them, but because it is an incontrovertible fact.