PMany subjects, as much as that of the “end of life”, combine to this extent intimate convictions, lived experience and the responsibility of the community. However, if the possibility of medical help to shorten an untenable life opens up to everyone, without exception, dizzying questions and calls for complex answers, it brings together a spectacular 90% of favorable opinions among the French. Emmanuel Macron, unlike his predecessor, had the courage to open the debate on an almost unanimously desired change in legislation.
The Claeys-Leonetti law of 2016, which authorizes “deep and continuous sedation until death” for patients in great suffering, whose vital prognosis is at risk in the short term, although it represented progress, it does not respond to all situations or all requests. It is not acceptable that patients in distress are forced to leave for Switzerland or Belgium, or to order products of uncertain composition online. While the freedom to resort to abortion has just been enshrined in the Constitution, it is time for the law to recognize the freedom to choose one’s death when the conditions for a dignified and bearable life are no longer met.
In September 2022, the opinion of the National Consultative Ethics Committee admitting, to “strict” terms, “the possibility of legal access to assisted suicide”, had opened the way for a citizens’ convention on the subject. In April 2023, at the end of intense debates, 184 citizens of all sensibilities spoke out in majority, without masking their differences, in favor of“an opening to active assistance in dying”. This means that the President of the Republic has a solid basis for announcing, as he has just done in The cross And Releasethe tabling, in April, of a bill on“assisted dying” which he presents as a text “of gathering and fraternity”.
By attaching access to this “help” to stricter conditions than those recommended by the citizens’ convention – ban on minors, capacity of discernment of the patient, vital prognosis, collegial decision of a medical team, period of reflection –, Emmanuel Macron removes the worst pitfall: that which would have consisted of encouraging the poorest to choose to disappear for fear of weighing on society or on their family. But the text presented does not avoid all criticism. The procedure appears complex and the definition of “vital prognosis engaged in the short or medium term » uncertain.
Take all the time for the discussion
The refusal to use the words “euthanasia” and “assisted suicide”, as well as “right” and “freedom”, stems from the laudable intention of not splitting the debate. But it leaves the fact that it is a question of opening up, in a very controlled way, these two possibilities. As for the fear that the“assisted dying” is not introduced to the detriment of the essential access of all to palliative care, it is not lifted by imprecise and insufficient presidential announcements.
Faced with such sensitive and complex issues, it is now up to parliamentarians to take all the time during the discussion in order to continue to “mature” a text already well established in the national conversation, then to adopt it. It would be distressing if the start of the European election campaign hampered a debate and progress which, by definition, transcends political divisions.