© KEYSTONE/GORAN BASIC
The Valais Grand Council accepted the law on assisted suicide in an institution on Thursday evening. The deputies debated for three hours on this emotional and delicate subject. The people will have the last word.
The plenum expressed itself on around sixty amendments. In the end, the nine articles of the law on palliative care and the supervision of the practice of assisted suicide in institutions were accepted by 83 votes once morest 40 and 2 abstentions.
The subject has been on the table of the Valais legislature since 2018 and the fronts have hardly changed: the left and the PLR supported the text, the PDC and the Greens accepted it by a large majority and the UDC supported it. rejected. The opposition of the Haut-Valais deputies was marked with a PDC which massively rejected the text.
No exception in Upper Valais
The vast majority of deputies followed the positions of the second reading committee which worked on the subject, rejecting most of the amendments. For example, they refused the one carried by the UDC of Valais Romand and Haut-Valais who wanted to delete the paragraph saying that “everyone has the right to exercise his personal freedom to end his life with dignity” .
They also swept away another proposal from the German-speaking UDC which wanted to exempt the health and social institutions of Haut-Valais from having to offer assisted suicide via external aid. According to Diego Schmid (UDC), most institutions in Upper Valais do not want to offer assisted suicide and it is a “regional difference” that the linguistic majority of the canton “should understand” and support “out of solidarity”. he estimated.
“A suitable place”
At the SVP of Valais Romand, which wanted to get assisted suicide out of social institutions, Maud Theler (PS / GC) recalled that the people who are there “often have no other places to live”. It would be discriminatory not to allow them to resort to assisted suicide in what has become their home, she stressed.
The PLR however succeeded in convincing the majority of the plenum to introduce a new paragraph into the law which specifies that “within a social institution which receives residents suffering from serious mental illness or serious mental handicap, the assistance suicide may take place in a place other than their place of residence (…)”. Clearly, the institution must provide an “appropriate place”. The left and part of the Greens in particular regretted this choice.
“Tolerate assisted suicide”
“With this law, we are not asking institutions to act, but to tolerate assisted suicide within their walls,” recalled Julien Dubuis. The chairman of the commission indicated that according to a study by the gfs-Zurich institute, 57% of Valaisans surveyed (41% in Haut-Valais) are in favor of assisted suicide and 19% rather favorable, and that in view of these figures, he is hopeful that the Valais population will be “more open than Parliament”.
The head of the health department Mathias Reynard welcomed a law which enshrines the principle of equal treatment for all institutions in matters of assisted suicide and which clarifies and strengthens the policy on palliative care. He indicated that the text would be submitted to the people “as soon as possible, probably at the end of the year”.
Currently, assisted suicide is not possible in all institutions, and in particular medico-social establishments (EMS). The directors and foundation boards of the institutions are free to accept it or not. On the other hand, people who wish to use an association such as Exit à domicile are authorized to do so. The law accepted Thursday puts an end to this inequality.
