<\/p>\n
NOTE<\/b>: The original article was published in French in the Huffintgon Post on September\u00a02, 2016 (read original article here >><\/a>).<\/i><\/p>\n ---------------------------------------------------------------------<\/p>\n To die of hunger, to put a bag over one\u2019s head until complete asphyxia, to shoot oneself in the heart\u2026 because we are sick, because we do not live at home any longer, because we have lost the use of our limbs, because we feel depressed with our lives.<\/p>\n Regardless of the method or motivation, are we are still capable of recognizing that it is suicide?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Or should the suicide prevention groups filter their calls? On the one hand those who have \u201cbad\u201d reasons and must be helped, and on the other, those who have \u201cgood\u201d reasons which a doctor should follow.<\/p>\n The reported number of people who let themselves starve to death recently should alarm us. We sense a trend, a wave of pleas to accept other reasons as \u201cgood\u201d and \u201cvalid\u201d for committing suicide. We could speak of a Werther effect<\/a>: a spike of emulation suicides in the wake of the publication of suicides in the media.<\/p>\n Instead, driven by a mechanically programmed logic<\/a>, we go down the same slippery slope that Belgium has followed before us: the argument of the end of life is no longer enough. We must now extend euthanasia<\/a> to those others who are in \u201cunworthy\u201d states.<\/p>\n The first injection helped lull the population into accepting a law that turned upside down all our social values<\/a>\u2026 precisely on the grounds that it was only about \u201cthe end of life.\u201d Today, we receive the second injection: one that opens the floodgates to death on demand.<\/p>\n Thus, the proponents who hid behind \u201ctight criteria\u201d<\/a> are the same who now criticize the federal law<\/a> because it does not go far enough. We quietly consider \u201cthe option of assisted suicide,\u201d which was shocking us not so long ago. And we are already talking about including children without flinching, without any other consideration than \u201cif it\u2019s good for them!\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, we do not see that we are witnessing a true advocacy for suicide, by which we validate (valorize) the reasons for wanting to die. Without ever taking offense at the causes behind these reasons. Life in the nursing home is rotten? REFORM THE NURSING HOME!<\/p>\n For those who endorse the new logic of suicide, now well underway, a human being would be defined by its ability to \u201cdo whatever you are doing yourself by yourself<\/a>,\u201d else you are \u201csocially and morally dead!\u201d<\/p>\n Such statements \u2013 that nobody denounces in order to ride the wave \u2013 show that the \u201cindividual\u201d choice of some is splashing over that of others. Thus, we are now in the process of dispossessing the severely handicapped<\/a> (and therefore dependent) of the indisputable status of \u201chuman being\u201d for the sole reason that they can not \u201cdo it all by themselves\u201d!?!<\/p>\n A human being should \u201cqualify?\u201d Meet \u201cstandards?\u201d Otherwise it would be justified to want to die? No wonder, in this context, that minimal protections, which can only reduce the risks<\/a> inherent in any law on euthanasia, are deemed \u201cobstacles<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n