“Who should make the gesture? », Emmanuel Macron asked the question during a dinner at the Elysee Palace on March 9, devoted to the theme of the end of life. Will an incurable patient be able, in the future in France, to ask a doctor to put an end to his life? Should euthanasia be legalized for this? “I don’t like the word euthanasia”had entrusted the head of state to the pope, who had received him in October 2022.
However, he will have to settle this question fairly quickly if he wants the ” law Project “ which he announced on Monday April 3 “by the end of summer” implement a “French model of the end of life” who would open the right to active assistance in dying. This is the objective he seemed to set himself when he received, that day, the report of the citizens’ convention on the end of life delivered the day before. At 75.6%, its members voted for active assistance in dying in the form of assisted suicide and euthanasia. This second modality can be either a choice open to the person, or an act envisaged in exceptional cases.
But the executive does not want to expose itself to a revolt from the medical world and is looking for a scenario so that the bill does not require caregivers to perform a lethal act. “The president had the wisdom to say: ‘I understand that we have to evolve on a law’, but not to commit at this stage to where we should go”, welcomed on France Inter, on April 4, Professor Jean-François Delfraissy, president of the National Consultative Ethics Committee (CCNE).
Find “the way of balance”
“In the new stage that began on April 3, the president asked us to continue to be in “co-construction” with caregivers and with parliamentarians. It is our responsibility to move forward in a cross-partisan way”, explain to Monde Agnès Firmin Le Bodo, Minister Delegate in charge of Territorial Organization and Health Professionals. A method which gives the government the possibility of not granting all the recommendations of the members of the convention.
In the national debate on the end of life launched in September, Mme Firmin Le Bodo co-piloted with Olivier Véran, minister responsible for democratic renewal, a group of parliamentarians and health professionals gathered on the subject, multiplied meetings with caregivers, visited countries where active assistance in dying is legalized. Favorable to an evolution of the law, the elected representative of Le Havre, re-elected in 2022 deputy (Horizons) of Seine-Maritime, had co-signed, in April 2021, the bill of Olivier Falorni, deputy (MoDem, Charente-Maritime) aimed at legalizing euthanasia.
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