While the Citizens’ Convention on the end, organized by the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (Cese) is holding its 6th session on February 17, 18 and 19 (debates accessible live), 13 signatory organizations (1) representing 800,000 caregivers are publishing an ethical and practical opinion on the consequences of a potential legalization of euthanasia and medically assisted suicide. They affirm that these practices which directly involve caregivers cannot in any way fall under care and alert the legislator to the threats that such a development would pose to vulnerable people.. Communiqué.
While the Citizens’ Convention on the End of Life is preparing to deliver its conclusions in the coming weeks, 13 professional organizations directly involved in the daily support of people at the end of life and representing nearly 1 million caregivers declare that:
- Vulnerable people for whom the imperative of autonomy is unsuitable will be directly threatened by the message that such legislation would send them: children, dependent people, people with psychiatric or cognitive disorders, people in a situation of great social insecurity.
- The deontological and legislative corpus defining and framing the nursing practice is incompatible with the implementation of euthanasia and medically assisted suicide.
- Consequently, these acts cannot in any way be considered as care, except to fundamentally subvert the definition.
Committed unconditionally and whatever the context to the support and care of people at the end of life, these organizations ask the legislator and the Government to:
- Make effective access to palliative care for all those who need it.
- Leave the world of care out of any project to legalize a form of administered death.
- Prioritize repairing a severely degraded healthcare system.
Our fellow citizens are confronted daily with unprecedented shortcomings in the supply of care: resignations of caregivers, medical deserts, shortages of medicines, deficiencies in the monitoring and support of patients or closures of hospital services. The signatory organizations invite everyone not to further destabilize a world of health in great fragility.
1– The signatories are: 2SPP: French Society for Pediatric Palliative Care; AFSOS: Francophone Association of Oncological Support Care; ANFIPA: French National Association of Nurses in Advanced Practice; CLAROMED: Association for the Clarification of the Role of the Doctor in the context of the end of life. ; CNPG: National Professional Geriatrics Council; CNPI: National Professional Nursing Council; FNEHAD: National Federation of Home Hospitalization Establishments; MCOOR: National Association of Medical Coordinators in nursing homes and the medico-social sector; SFAP: French Society for Support and Palliative Care; SFC: French Cancer Society; SFGG: French Society of Geriatrics and Gerontology; SNPI: National Union of Nursing Professionals ; UNICANCER Palliative Care Group (Federation of centers for the fight against cancer).
• Can killing be considered as healing? Interprofessional ethical reflections on the prospects for legalizing assisted suicide and euthanasia and their possible impacts on care practices, February 16, 2023, in pdf on the website of the French Society for Palliative Care.