Euthanasia
There's no doubt that our friend Antoine hasn't finished surprising us. He knows how to express and share his deepest convictions. Today, he shares his thoughts on a burning issue: the choice of how to end one's life, a major debate that, given the rapid pace of events, could soon be imposed upon us without any real consensus.
Beyond any political considerations, which have no place on our website, this question concerns us all, and especially our elders, wherever they may be, as well as the residents of our care homes. They place their trust in those who have chosen to accompany them with faithfulness, dignity, and humanity, never abandoning them.
Thank you, Antoine, for this insightful and courageous reflection. It sheds light on a truth that is not always easy to express without sparking heated controversy. One question remains: if this law on end-of-life care were adopted, some fear it would gradually pave the way for a society where criteria such as age, dependency, or disability could one day influence the value placed on a life. This prospect, worrying for many, evokes the risk of a cold, administrative, or technological logic, where the most essential decisions would be entrusted to a purely mathematical, mechanical, or artificial rationality.
We invite you to discover this article entitled: “To Be or Not To Be.”
Christian Morisot
TO BE OR NOT TO BE
Dedicated to my friend Charles Morlais, Corporal Breaker of Pompon*.
By Antoine Marquet
Hamlet’s Sleep and the Illusion of Progress: Meditation on the Disposable Human
In his famous soliloquy, Hamlet suspends his actions in the face of the vertigo of existence: “To be or not to be.” The Prince of Denmark knew that death is not a technical solution, but the entry into an unknown sleep that engages the soul's responsibility. By preparing to definitively vote on the law authorizing assisted suicide and euthanasia, our society claims to solve the enigma of suffering through a protocol of lethal administration. This is the final act of a sad contemporary pantomime, where dignity is confused with utility. A semblance of progress that, in reality, conceals a major ethical failure.
This transition marks a metaphysical rupture. In 1981, France abolished the death penalty, establishing the absolute principle that no authority could dispose of a human life. Forty-five years later, this bulwark is crumbling. The current government is paradoxically re-establishing technical control of death through the medical establishment. We are witnessing the culmination of a slow erosion of fundamental values, of semantic shifts, and of successive betrayals.
Simone Veil conceived of abortion as a last resort in cases of tragic distress, a vision that has since been distorted. Proponents of the PACS (Civil Solidarity Pact) swore to exclude same-sex marriage, yet paved the way for its creation. Surrogacy is undergoing the same process of normalization. Those who have the means and the desire rent surrogacy abroad, confident that judges will not be able to leave children without a homeland. Ethics no longer evolves; it shifts with the whims of political expediency. At the heart of this rupture lies the fate of medicine.
By transforming the doctor or nurse into a dispenser of death, the law breaks the age-old Hippocratic Oath. The caregiver is no longer the one who heals or relieves suffering, but the one who becomes the executor of death. Certainly, the legislature attempted to assuage its conscience by adopting the law of May 26, 2026, on palliative care, enshrining the principle of early support and assistance for loved ones.
But the simultaneous introduction of assisted dying empties this promise of its spiritual substance. The deep sedation provided by the Claeys-Leonetti law allowed caregivers to extinguish suffering and let life fade away; euthanasia, on the other hand, requires a deliberate act that ends life. For medical personnel, the conscience clause becomes the last bulwark against a mission that betrays the very essence of their vocation: to heal.
Here we encounter the moral paradox of our century. Our era sanctifies inanimate matter: we must repair, recycle, and conserve clothing and other objects to preserve our environment. But through a tragic reversal, the suffering human being escapes this requirement of care.
Once it is no longer productive, once it suffers the degradation of illness, it is perceived as an obsolete object, a consumer product to be discarded. The medical profession, historically the guarantor of the protection of the most vulnerable, is entrusted with managing this obsolescence. By refusing to inhabit the time of vulnerability, our civilization transforms the deathbed into a disposal site.
Let us think of the summit Hamlet's eye, and let us remember that a human being cannot be recycled, cannot be discarded: they are cared for, and caregivers are the guardians of this humanity, not the technicians of death.
* Song by J. Brel
By Antoine Marquet
Hamlet’s Sleep and the Illusion of Progress: Meditation on the Disposable Human
In his famous soliloquy, Hamlet suspends his actions in the face of the vertigo of existence: “To be or not to be.” The Prince of Denmark knew that death is not a technical solution, but the entry into an unknown sleep that engages the soul's responsibility. By preparing to definitively vote on the law authorizing assisted suicide and euthanasia, our society claims to solve the enigma of suffering through a protocol of lethal administration. This is the final act of a sad contemporary pantomime, where dignity is confused with utility. A semblance of progress that, in reality, conceals a major ethical failure.
This transition marks a metaphysical rupture. In 1981, France abolished the death penalty, establishing the absolute principle that no authority could dispose of a human life. Forty-five years later, this bulwark is crumbling. The current government is paradoxically re-establishing technical control of death through the medical establishment. We are witnessing the culmination of a slow erosion of fundamental values, of semantic shifts, and of successive betrayals.
Simone Veil conceived of abortion as a last resort in cases of tragic distress, a vision that has since been distorted. Proponents of the PACS (Civil Solidarity Pact) swore to exclude same-sex marriage, yet paved the way for its creation. Surrogacy is undergoing the same process of normalization. Those who have the means and the desire rent surrogacy abroad, confident that judges will not be able to leave children without a homeland. Ethics no longer evolves; it shifts with the whims of political expediency. At the heart of this rupture lies the fate of medicine.
By transforming the doctor or nurse into a dispenser of death, the law breaks the age-old Hippocratic Oath. The caregiver is no longer the one who heals or relieves suffering, but the one who becomes the executor of death. Certainly, the legislature attempted to assuage its conscience by adopting the law of May 26, 2026, on palliative care, enshrining the principle of early support and assistance for loved ones.
But the simultaneous introduction of assisted dying empties this promise of its spiritual substance. The deep sedation provided by the Claeys-Leonetti law allowed caregivers to extinguish suffering and let life fade away; euthanasia, on the other hand, requires a deliberate act that ends life. For medical personnel, the conscience clause becomes the last bulwark against a mission that betrays the very essence of their vocation: to heal.
Here we encounter the moral paradox of our century. Our era sanctifies inanimate matter: we must repair, recycle, and conserve clothing and other objects to preserve our environment. But through a tragic reversal, the suffering human being escapes this requirement of care.
Once it is no longer productive, once it suffers the degradation of illness, it is perceived as an obsolete object, a consumer product to be discarded. The medical profession, historically the guarantor of the protection of the most vulnerable, is entrusted with managing this obsolescence. By refusing to inhabit the time of vulnerability, our civilization transforms the deathbed into a disposal site.
Let us think of the summit Hamlet's eye, and let us remember that a human being cannot be recycled, cannot be discarded: they are cared for, and caregivers are the guardians of this humanity, not the technicians of death.
* Song by J. Brel