In a mature democracy, laws are not surreptitiously imposed by the sheer force of a handful of votes, but rather by opening spaces of information and opportunities for an honest, open and respectful conversation that helps to think through what is intended to be done. And it acts surreptitiously when it takes advantage of the suffocation caused by the pandemic to sneak, with hardly civil service examination, a law such as euthanasia, which is being promoted to make legal and normal, not what leads to the common good, but purely and simply an ideology of death; of more death. Because hinting to vulnerable people that they could get out of the way -promote suicide, in a word - is not a social good. And a euthanasia law actually does that.

The congress de los Diputados has just given another impulse to an organic law regulating euthanasia. The silence with which a law with such serious repercussions is being handled is astonishing, as has been seen in the countries around us where similar laws have been passed, C . In fact, it has always been intended that the legalization of euthanasia be limited to very specific cases and with very rigorous criteria -this is what Spain wants to do- and it has always gotten out of hand, in some cases in a tremendous way, as in Holland, where surveys by the Attorney General's Office of that country showed that, contrary to what is prescribed by law, less than half of the euthanasias performed were reported to the authorities, 40 percent were performed on incapable patients, and 15 percent were performed on capable patients without their consent. To make matters worse, it is precisely the Dutch law that has served as inspiration for the one being sought in Spain. In the end, the laws that grant the power to cause death to others legally end up expanding the assumptions as a result of a painless ethical decadence and after committing numerous abuses. Without going any further, this is what has happened in Spain with the abortion law.

It seems insensitive that in times of such vulnerability of the elderly in this country, when tens of thousands of families have watched helplessly as a virus ripped away overnight the presence and life of their elders - their parents, their grandparents, their siblings, their uncles, their friends - a government pushes with a tenacity worthy of a better cause a law to recognize a right of design "to a dignified death". This law is an escape through the emergency exit because true compassion would lead to strive to improve the care of people who suffer: "there are no "untreatable" patients, even if they are incurable". Greater access to palliative care could greatly alleviate the pain of many people. Here it is worth making a great effort to extend this care to the population.

On the other hand, I cannot avoid a certain fear when a theologian is asked to give an opinion on a law such as this, because a subtle equation between religiosity and rejection of euthanasia has sometimes been hinted at. I would like to emphasize just this: one can be the most atheist and anti-religious person in the world and be against a law on euthanasia. Just think of the data that alarmed the Dutch Attorney General's Office. Furthermore, it must be clearly stated that the Catholic Church does not need to resort to any revelation or dogma to rationally explain why a law on euthanasia is not a good thing. test of this is the brief grade recently published by the Spanish Episcopal lecture , whose expressive degree scroll I repeat here: "there are no "unkillable" patients, even if they are incurable".

As the twice President of the Republic of Uruguay, Dr. Tabaré Vázquez -left-wing politician and, by the way, recognized member of the Grand Lodge of Freemasonry of Uruguay- wrote in the text with which he vetoed the law decriminalizing abortion in that country, "the true Degree of civilization of a nation is measured by how it protects the most needy. That is why the weakest must be protected more. Because the criterion is no longer the value of the subject in terms of the affections it arouses in others, or the utility it provides, but the value resulting from its mere existence".