On May 15th, a new and unified voice was raised in France, carried by the Conference of Religious Leaders (CRC), which brings together Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist representatives. In an op-ed published in Le Monde, these religious leaders expressed their profound concern regarding the bill aiming to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide, currently being debated in the National Assembly.
This is not merely a question of religious or dogmatic argumentation. It is, as they emphasize, a major anthropological rupture, a fundamental shift in our perspective on life and death. The integration of the "possibility of administering death" into our Public Health Code constitutes, in their view, a serious perversion of medicine, which has always been founded on the Hippocratic Oath: to relieve suffering without ever taking life.
Many healthcare workers share this anguish. Their mission is to accompany life, to bring consolation and care, not to be tasked with causing death. This role inverts the very nature of medicine and risks establishing a culture of death, where it has always been a service rendered to life.
The religious leaders also denounce the deliberately ambiguous use of the term "aid in dying." This euphemistic vocabulary, which attempts to mask the reality of the act—the voluntary administration of a lethal product—confuses minds and weakens the moral debate. To claim that a death thus provoked would be "natural" is a dangerous falsehood, a way of lulling consciences to sleep in the face of the gravity of the act.
Beyond medicine, this project calls into question two essential pillars of our society: fraternity and solidarity. By opening the door to this "right" to die, we expose the most vulnerable—the elderly, the sick, the disabled—to implicit pressure, to a guilt heavy with meaning: that of being a burden to others. In countries where euthanasia is already in place, statistics show a constant rise in requests, while efforts to develop palliative care dangerously erode.
Their appeal is clear: far from being progress, this law would represent a moral, social, and medical regression. As the final vote approaches in the National Assembly, they urge parliamentarians to exercise the greatest prudence and to choose humanity. Rather than paving the way for administered death, we must invest in training caregivers in attentive listening, in developing palliative care, and in providing holistic and respectful accompaniment until the last breath.
This is a call to privilege human relationship over solitude, attentive presence over abandonment, and true compassion over a deadly resignation.