Erwan Le Morhedec: "If euthanasia is legalized, it risks becoming a tool for managing old age"

Erwan Le Morhedec is a lawyer and essayist, author of

End of life in the Republic - Before turning off the light

“

 This question, which Dr. Corinne Van Oost threw at me during a debate on RCF on February 8, has not ceased to resonate heavily in me ever since.

I had challenged her on the fact that in Belgium, we can perform euthanasia on people with simple AMD (Age-Related Macular Degeneration).

However, without denying the handicap and the anguish that this arouses, it is clear that the vital prognosis of the person is not engaged.

Far from contesting it, as I expected, my interlocutor went on to justify her practice, exposing the case of a little 90-year-old lady who lost her sight, had fallen three times, suffered a fracture at the last and didn't want to go to a nursing home.

Dr. Van Oost left his question open,

as if she didn't dare answer them herself, as if she didn't dare conclude and put the necessary words.

"

 In Belgium, they can be offered death, and this little 90-year-old lady was euthanized.

Read also“Without sufficient palliative care, we organize the request for euthanasia”

Let's not forget that, according to the very figures of the Federal Commission for the Control and Evaluation of Euthanasia, presented in its 2020 report, euthanasia is practiced at nearly 90% on people over 60 years old. and almost 70% on people over 70 years old.

For them, the practice has resorted to the term “

 ”.

Since no pathology taken in isolation fulfills the criteria giving rise to the right to euthanasia, by adding up the various age-related pathologies and without the vital prognosis being involved as a result, euthanasia may be practiced.

This is the reality of euthanasia,

We have abdicated all real ambition on one of the greatest challenges that awaits us all and opened the way to euthanasia which will turn without saying so into the modality of managing old age.

Erwan Le Morhedec

However, yesterday's sequence around the presentation of his project by Emmanuel Macron announces such a dark future in France.

Announcing a Citizens' Conference on the end of life (while the Estates General on Bioethics, Great National Debate and Citizens' Climate Convention demonstrated one after the other the futility of the practice in the current context), he outlined the trail of a referendum on its result, a path which we imagine quite well will only be used to ratify euthanasia or assisted suicide.

Beautiful continuity, to tell the truth since in 2021, we almost legalized euthanasia at the same time as we drew a cross on the Old Age law.

We have thus abdicated any real ambition on the

was not mistaken in an article whose comparisons make one shudder: “

(Le Monde, March 18, 2022).

Emmanuel Macron has thus abandoned the ambition of a coherent plan in favor of a sprinkling of incomplete measures.

The list of these "

 " begins with the mention of a bonus for the adaptation of housing, aligned not with the scrapping bonus but, it is more delicate with

, for energy renovation.

Then, after other equally unambitious and inventive proposals, comes euthanasia.

To be concrete, euthanasia will be concrete, for who will suffer it.

This journalistic presentation is as revealing as it is terrifying: here is euthanasia which, in mentalities, takes its place among the tools for managing old age!

Yet there would be so much to do, so much to invent to take better care of our parents, whether by adapting the Montessori method implemented by Vincent You, director of a retirement home or, as it proposes this, through intergenerational housing, the promotion of day care, the creation of mobile teams to break the effects of the break between home and establishment, etc.

But no, and this makes one shudder: among the ranks of “

 ” for our parents and for ourselves, one day, our ageist society spontaneously classifies euthanasia.

How could our society and the “progressives” have lost this realism and this simple humanism in the space of thirty years?

Because euthanasia would respond to the perpetual movement of emancipation that they revere?

Let them therefore realize that in the long term, emancipation is called isolation and loneliness.

Erwan Le Morhedec

“

 “Here is also coming to France a society which, to this “

 ” who is afraid to join a nursing home, will be able to propose death.

This very term “

 ” is terribly revealing.

In effect, this euthanasia – which must be requested and which no one is ever supposed to offer – becomes a

social

Whoever maintains that the legalization of euthanasia would be a law of freedom must not have listened to his father, his mother, nor any elderly person who will hear this proposal.

“

 », «

 », «

 ».

Having asked a palliative care caregiver if she heard these sentences, she simply replied: “

 .

And even more so when an elderly person is left unaccompanied, without hope, in the situations of abandonment and mistreatment that Victor Castanet described in

.

François Mitterrand had confided it to Marie de Hennezel: "

 How our society and the "

 » have they been able to lose this realism and this simple humanism in the space of thirty years?

Because euthanasia would respond to the perpetual movement of emancipation that they revere?

Let them therefore realize that in the long term, emancipation is called isolation and loneliness.

It is the vulnerability of the individual left to himself, in a world built by the strong for the strong.

So let's wake up, there's a whole country to get back on its feet, to put the person back at the center.

We bet that the possible costs of a humanist policy will find their counterpart in the benefit of a united society.

But if, faced with this little "

 who is afraid of going to a retirement home, our whole being revolts so that the only proposal that we make to him allows him to live his end of life with dignity until its end, it is that we have truly abdicated the most elementary humanity.

We will then deserve the contempt that history will reserve for us.