The deputies began on Monday the examination of the bill on the end of life which should open up the possibility for certain patients of assistance in dying. Some deputies, like the PCF deputy Pierre Dharréville, are opposed to the text, saying they are “seized with a bottomless dizziness at the admission of assisted suicide and euthanasia among the actions of the Republic”. But for Olivier Falorni, general rapporteur of the bill on the end of life, guest of La Grande interview Europe 1-CNews on Thursday, “it will be an aid to life”.
“A way to calm down a little these last moments of life”
“Assistance in dying, for the vast majority of people, will be assistance in living. This will allow people who are at the end of their lives, who are sick, who are suffering, to say to themselves ‘I will have this ultimate recourse’ which the vast majority will not use. It will perhaps help them to continue down the road a little if they wish. I say that assistance in dying can be assistance in living because it is. is a way to calm down a little these last moments of life”, estimated the MoDem deputy for Charente-Maritime at the microphone of Europe 1.
“The notion of vital prognosis has not disappeared”
The bill was largely modified by deputies in the special committee. The most criticized change concerns the replacement of the criterion of “vital prognosis engaged in the short or medium term”, the deputies preferring the notion of affection “in the advanced or terminal phase”.
“The notion of vital prognosis has not disappeared, things will have to be clarified in the rewriting,” affirmed Olivier Falorni, “we keep the notion of serious and incurable illness. The definition of serious illness is an illness which engages the vital prognosis of the person, it is in the government’s statement of reasons, it has been retained but I think that we must re-specify vital prognosis engaged.”
The rapporteur points out the great difficulty in establishing what the medium term is. “You ask a doctor to be a soothsayer by asking him to determine the time patients have left to live while the advanced or terminal phase requires the doctor as an expert,” he said. “Does this patient have generalized stage 4 cancer? Is this Charcot patient starting to have symptoms of loss of swallowing, of breathing”, he listed as examples before add that Charcot’s patients think that there will be no doctor who will agree to make this vital prognosis, “given the difficulty in assessing the time a patient has left to live.”
“The word euthanasia offends me”
If some deputies use the notion of euthanasia to talk about the bill, Olivier Falorni refuses it. “The word euthanasia offends me. It’s the word used in Belgium, I talk about assisted dying in France. I am a historian by training, there are words that have been sullied by History. Euthanasia wants “to say beautiful death, that’s the etymology, except that at one point, the Third Reich decided to eliminate hundreds of thousands of disabled people under the term euthanasia,” explained Olivier Falorni.
At the microphone of Europe 1, the MoDem deputy confides having met Robert Badinter in 2021. The former Minister of Justice revealed to him that he was in favor of an evolution of active assistance in dying but would have asked him not to use the term euthanasia, a term which resonates, for him, “like the ignoble memory of a stain”.
To access “assisted dying”, five cumulative conditions are imposed, defined in article 6:
- “Be at least 18 years old”
- “Be of French nationality or reside stably and regularly in France”
- “Being suffering from a serious and incurable condition in an advanced or terminal phase”, according to the text adopted in committee, with the support of the general rapporteur Olivier Falorni
- “Present physical suffering, possibly accompanied by psychological suffering linked to this condition, which is either refractory to treatment or unbearable when the person does not receive treatment or has chosen to stop receiving it”
- “Be able to express one’s will in a free and informed manner”