History of an expression. Obviously, it is important to choose your words carefully when talking about death. This is surely why, in parallel with the various consultations carried out between 2022 and 2023 with a view to modifying the legislation on the end of life, a group of experts, led by the writer Erik Orsenna, was entrusted with a specific mission by the executive: design a lexicon of end-of-life words, in the hope of defining sometimes vague terms and clearing up a sensitive subject.
If this glossary was ultimately never published, Emmanuel Macron’s choice to announce a bill providing for the use of a “assisted dying” shows that the president has thought long and hard about how to frame the upcoming political and media debate.
Indeed, why did you retain this term in order to designate the possibility for adult patients suffering from an incurable illness, whose vital prognosis is in jeopardy in the short or medium term, to request that an end be put to their suffering? ? However, there was no shortage of choice: “euthanasia”, “assisted suicide”, “assisted suicide”, or even the variants “active assistance in dying” and “medical assistance in dying”, the formulations are as numerous as the positions on the subject. “Because he is simple and humanreplied Emmanuel Macron to Release and to The cross, and that it clearly defines what it is about. » Concerning this last point, however, there is room for doubt.
Appreciated for its ambiguity
Historically, the expression “assisted dying” is appreciated precisely for its ambiguity. “This is a formula that we see appearing in surveys carried out by the Association for the Right to Die with Dignity [ADMD] in the 1980s-1990s », notes Michel Castra, professor of sociology at the University of Lille. While at this time the controversy surrounding the end of life was (already) in full swing, the ADMD sought to demonstrate the vast support of the French for euthanasia, assisted suicide and the right to choose one’s death. In the context of these questionnaires, the expression “help in dying”, which does not specify the author, nor the nature, nor the modalities of the “help” provided, proves, according to him, to be very useful. “This allowed the ADMD to say that 85% of French people were in favor, if the person found themselves in insurmountable suffering due to an incurable illness, that they could be helped to die at their request”continues the sociologist.
This imprecision also allowed the expression to be taken up… by opponents of these practices. In a conference report, published in 2004, the French Society for Support and Palliative Care (SFAP), an institution historically opposed to euthanasia and assisted suicide, asked: “Helping to die, isn’t it first of all taking care and supporting? » Twenty years later, in a column in “Le Monde”, Claire Fourcade, director of the SFAP, even sees in assisted dying “the true mission of palliative care”. “The expression considerably euphemizes the reality it designates, and can therefore designate diametrically opposed things”explains Mr. Castra.
You have 41.65% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.