It took four days and often repetitive battles for article 5, of the bill relating to support for the sick and the end of life, to be adopted by the National Assembly on Thursday June 6. The article voted by 88 votes to 50 introduces, for the first time in the law, the possibility of requesting “assisted death”. He gives the definition: “Assistance in dying consists of authorizing and supporting a person who has expressed a request to use a lethal substance. »
The article thus adopted provides that “the person administers a lethal substance or, when he or she is not physically able to do so, have it administered by a doctor or nurse”. The deputies adopted the article, however modifying it: they excluded the possibility provided for in the initial text that a “willing person”other than a caregiver, can perform the lethal gesture, against the advice of the government.
Some 240 amendments were tabled on this article, described by deputies as “central”, ” major “, ” crucial “, which constitutes the “heart of the matter” of the text examined at first reading in the National Assembly, since May 27. The elected representatives of the Republicans (LR) and those of the National Rally (RN) fought it fiercely. Conversely, its main zealots were the “rebellious” deputies, socialists and ecologists, supported by the left wing of the macronie. This has not prevented elected officials from all sides from adopting dissident positions in relation to the dominant line within their group.
The inflexible government
For its opponents, the principle of “assisted dying” defined in this article 5 is “an anthropological break” with “ the principle of inviolability of human life”, according to Thibault Bazin, deputy (LR) for Meurthe-et-Moselle. Conversely, the deputies in support of the article defended “assisted dying” as the way to prevent sick people from “to suffer martyrdom and hell”according to René Pilato, “rebellious” deputy from Charente, or as “the freedom to choose the end to which each person aspires according to their convictions and according to their suffering”stated Marie-Noëlle Battistel, (socialist) deputy for Isère.
The right and the far right waged semantic guerrilla warfare during the debates, pointing out the lack of clarity of the expression “assisted dying”. They were supported by certain Renaissance elected officials, on the grounds that the executive chose, with this expression, to mask the “decriminalization” of “assisted suicide” and of “euthanasia”. “It’s curious to see the difficulties we had in talking about assisted suicide and euthanasia, and to see that these are ultimately the terms we use in the debates because they are the ones by which we understand “launched the elected representative (Renaissance) of Paris, Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet.
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