Around twenty unions and caregiver organizations denounced on Monday a “parody of consultation” around the end-of-life bill after leaks on a working version, which aroused their “concern” and “anger” .
While they had a meeting early in the morning with the Minister for Health Professions, Agns Firmin Le Bodo, who has been overseeing the project for months, they decided to boycott this meeting, they indicated during a meeting. press conference. According to the minister’s entourage, thirteen other healthcare organizations were present at the meeting.
The bill on the end of life is long overdue. Initially promised for the end of summer, it is now scheduled for the end of February. The government is facing a particularly sensitive subject. If several opinion polls judge the French majority to be in favor of legalizing assisted dying, this prospect arouses opposition from religions and a large number of caregivers.
French people mostly in favor of legalizing assisted dying
Last Thursday, Le Figaro revealed a provisional version of the bill, which Le Monde had already reported on in mid-November. Are present in this text the possibilities of resorting to important conditions for assisted suicideor even euthanasia.
This text immediately aroused our concern and anger through the proposals it contains, write the organizations having boycotted the meeting in a common text, denouncing a parody of consultation with caregivers. They criticize many points of the draft bill, which provides that a single doctor bears the responsibility for accepting or not the request to be helped to die.
One term particularly arouses anger: reverse first aid. This means that a caregiver can hasten death if the administration of the lethal substance goes poorly. We cannot condone the contempt shown towards caregivers, say the protesters. We ask that the component of palliative care be implemented as soon as possible, and be separated from the end-of-life bill, argued Claire Fourcade, president of the French Society for Support and Palliative Care, during the press conference.
Ms. Firmin Le Bodo announced that the bill on the French end-of-life model would be presented in February, after a ten-year plan on palliative care. But, in doing so the government links palliative care to this law which gives a license to killdeclared Thierry Amouroux, spokesperson for the National Union of Nursing Professionals, on Monday.