DThese recent votes invalidate the idea that France, in complete confusion, is at the mercy of conservative and reactionary forces. The first relates to the constitutionalization of voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion) obtained in Congress on March 4: 780 parliamentarians voted for, 72 against, 50 abstained. The result was so massive that an unusual cheerfulness, tinged with pride, permeated the ceremony of March 8 during which the seal of the Republic was affixed to this text which consecrates the vigor of the feminist fight. Having become the first country to include guaranteed freedom of access to abortion in its Constitution, France now intends to take the fight to the European stage through inclusion in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, at a time when this right appears to be weakened in several countries, notably the United States.
The same week, deputies unanimously approved, at first reading, a bill aimed at recognizing and repairing the harm suffered by homosexual people as a result of discriminatory laws in force between 1942 and 1982. “Sorry, sorry to the people, to the homosexuals of France who suffered for forty years during this totally unfair repression. Our Republic is never as beautiful as when it recognizes that it has lost the thread of its founding principles, liberty, equality, fraternity.declared the Keeper of the Seals, Eric Dupond-Moretti, in a consensual and emotional atmosphere.
Admitting the errors of the past, consolidating existing rights, opening new ones are part of the struggles that France can take advantage of. The legalization of the use of abortion, the abolition of the death penalty, the civil partnership, marriage for all testify to the concern that many leaders, mostly from the left but not only from the left, have had to support the evolution of morals, even if they had to shake up the conservative camp. After appearing hesitant for a long time, Emmanuel Macron chose to join the movement in turn by announcing, in Release And The cross (dated Monday March 11), that a bill on the end of life will be presented to the Council of Ministers in April to be discussed from May in Parliament.
An imperfectly applied law
In addition to a substantial strengthening of palliative care, the text provides for the possibility of requesting assistance in dying, under strictly regulated conditions. Even if the terms “assisted suicide” and “euthanasia” are carefully avoided, even if the emergence of a new right or a new freedom is in no way claimed, the declared desire of the President of the Republic to go to the -beyond the Claeys-Leonetti law, which today governs the legal conditions at the end of life, will open, in the middle of the electoral campaign, a public debate whose degree of violence no one can yet predict.
You have 51.75% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.