18/08/2026
There is something deeply revealing in the way our culture increasingly speaks about dignity.
We often locate dignity in the power to decide: to decide whether a life should begin, continue, or end; to decide whether dependence, illness, disability, or suffering make life still worth living. Autonomy becomes almost synonymous with dignity.
But that reverses the order of things. If dignity depends on our capacity to choose, then those with the least autonomy inevitably become those whose dignity is most fragile.
The unborn child, the severely disabled person, the unconscious patient, the elderly person with dementia, the person overwhelmed by suffering...
A truly human society should not respond to vulnerability by perfecting the mechanisms through which life can be rejected. It should respond by becoming better at carrying vulnerability with people.
Perhaps the real measure of progress is not how efficiently we can eliminate lives judged too difficult, but how seriously we are prepared to love, accompany and protect human beings precisely when choice, strength and independence disappear.
We want to be able to talk about the value of life in a way that is human. We speak because we believe that every human life has value.
