France, faced with the difficult adoption of its “aid in dying” law

French deputies began this Monday to debate a controversial bill to allow the assisted suicide under strict conditions, a procedure that could last more than a year and that, if successful, would bring France closer to its European neighbors.

“Today we have to write and vote on a great law of freedom, the freedom to dispose of one’s own death, in the image of the freedom to dispose of one’s own body that we have just enshrined in our Constitution.“said the speaker of the law, Olivier Falorniin reference to abortion.

The great social reform of President Emmanuel Macron’s second term represents, for some, opening “Pandora’s box” of euthanasia, while others consider it necessary to end the suffering of the sick.

Around nine out of 10 French people support authorizing euthanasia or assisted suicide for people “who suffer from unbearable and incurable diseases”, according to a recent IFOP survey for the Association for the Right to Die with Dignity (ADMD).

But the parliamentary debates are expected to be intense, under pressure from religious representatives and palliative care workers, which could extend the parliamentary process until mid-2025, or even beyond.

“I helped my mother die. She committed suicide and I was present. Who am I to stop him?“, said the environmentalist deputy in April Sandrine Rousseauwho in 2013 explained that his mother, in a terminal phase due to cancer, ended her days with medication.

The right-wing deputy Philippe Juvinan anesthetist by profession, opposes going beyond deep sedation of dying patients, as currently permitted by law, a practice he applied to his father.

“I didn’t kill my father. I helped him. The difference is fundamental“, he assured juvina member of the opposition party The Republicans (LR), on which Macron has relied to carry out his main reforms since he lost the absolute majority in 2022.

But on this occasion the centrist ruling party could rely on the left to adopt its bill, which garners the rejection of the majority of right-wing deputies and also divides the extreme right, based on personal visions and experiences.

“Balance”

At the end of a process that began in December 2022, with the launch of a convention of citizens chosen by lottery to debate how to create a “help to die”, the government presented its bill in April 2024.

Although the government avoids talking about euthanasia or assisted suicide, the objective is to offer certain patients the possibility of committing suicide and, when they are unable to carry out the fatal act, receive help to die.

The initial project contemplates the possibility of administering a lethal substance to adults who request it, if they are at risk of dying in the short or medium term from a disease.incurable” and that causes pain that cannot be treated.

But, during the debates in committee prior to its examination by the chamber of the National Assembly, the deputies modified the formulation to include the notion of patients “in advanced or terminal phase“, instead of the idea of ​​”short or medium term”

Changing the criteria is “break the balance”warned the Minister of Health, Catherine Vautrin.

Aid in dying cannot be applied to minors or to patients suffering from psychiatric or neurodegenerative diseases that affect judgment, such as Alzheimer’s.

Until now, French patients with painful illnesses who wanted to end their days traveled to other countries such as neighboring Belgium, which, along with the Netherlands, were the first to allow euthanasia in 2022.

Spain authorized euthanasia and medically assisted suicide for people with serious and incurable illnesses in 2021, a year before Portugal. Beyond Europe, Americans Canada, Colombia and Ecuador also allow euthanasia.