Last week, France became the first nation in the world to enshrine a right to abortion in its constitution. It was as literal a repudiation of intergenerational solidarity as one can imagine. I argued last week that it renewed the relevance of Edmund Burke’s critique of the French Revolution, a critique he rooted in an appreciation of the continuity of a nation’s social life, something the revolution directly attacked. “People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors,” he argued in his Reflections on the Revolution in France. France today is guilty of the same.

I wrote last week that such a dramatic action would bring further “degradation of human life” in France. I did not expect such quick vindication in this prediction. But in an interview published Monday, French president Emmanuel Macron announced new legislation to legalize “aid in dying.” The Associated Press reports:

In an interview published Monday by French newspapers La Croix and Liberation, Macron said the new bill will be restricted to adults suffering from an incurable illness who are expected to die in the “short or middle-term” and who are suffering “intractable” physical or psychological pain.

Macron said the law will offer “a possible path, in a determined situation, with precise criteria, where the medical decision is playing its role.”

Macron naturally described the bill as “simple and humane.” But whatever precautions and restrictions would come with the process now, it will further cheapen the value of life in France. The experience of other European countries and Canada indicates where this logic is likely to lead unless contested: to a culture of death, claiming more and more people as its victims. Changes of this nature often have an irresistible momentum that gradually melts away restrictions. Sometimes the slippery slope can look more like a 90-degree angle.