Once the principle that killing is a splendid answer to human suffering is established, the expansion of eligibility will follow in due course.

The assisted suicide movement is slowly metastasizing throughout the West. Delaware just became the twelfth U.S. jurisdiction allowing doctors to intentionally prescribe a lethal overdose of drugs as a supposed “treatment” for a terminal illness. (Why such an event pleases certain politicians and activists is beyond me. We are talking about endorsing suicide.)

Now, France is on the verge of legalizing assisted suicide/euthanasia as the General Assembly just passed a bill by a comfortable 305–199 margin. From The Guardian:

The legislation would allow a medical team to decide if a patient is eligible to “gain access to a lethal substance when they have expressed the wish”. Patients would be able to use it themselves or have it administered by a nurse or doctor “if they are in no condition physically to do so themselves”.

Patients must meet a number of strict conditions: they must be over 18, hold French citizenship or residency and suffer from a “serious and incurable, life-threatening, advanced or terminal illness” that is “irreversible”.

The disease must cause “constant, unbearable physical or psychological suffering” that cannot be addressed by medical treatment, and the patient must be capable of “expressing freely and in an informed manner” their wish to end their life.

If the bill ultimately passes, these supposed “strict” restrictions will be continually expanded — as has happened in almost every jurisdiction in which some form of hastened death has been legalized — until they eventually melt away. Indeed, one of the supporters of the French bill gave away the game:

Right-to-die campaigners have welcomed the law, though describing it as relatively modest in scope. “It’s a foot in the door, which will be important for what comes next,” said Stéphane Gemmani of the ADMD association.

That is always the strategy: Get whatever you can today and once the principle that killing is a splendid answer to human suffering is established, the expansion of eligibility will follow in due course.

Our cultures are becoming so nihilistic that, in some quarters, the emerging right to death — eventually for any reason — has greater emotional salience than the steadily eroding right to life.