France may allow at-home dying for terminally ill
Macron ‘trying to get rid of sick people’ as new law would prescribe patients lethal medicine to end life
EMMANUEL MACRON will present a new “aid in dying” bill to allow terminally ill people to end their lives at home using lethal medication. The move towards legalising euthanasia follows a long consultation with French citizens on “active assistance to dying”, with studies showing that most people in France support such end-of-life options.
However, it has sparked ire among religious leaders in the traditionally Catholic country, along with many health workers.
Only adults with full control of their judgment, suffering an incurable and life-threatening illness in the short to medium term and whose pain cannot be relieved will be able to “ask to be helped to die”, Mr Macron told La Croix and Liberation newspapers.
The change is necessary as “there are situations you cannot humanely accept”, the president added. The goal was “to reconcile an individual’s autonomy with the nation’s solidarity”.
“With this bill, we are facing up to death,” said Mr Macron who last week oversaw inscribing the right to abortion in France’s Constitution, the first country in the world to do so.
The controversial “aid in dying” bill will be debated in parliament starting May 27, just two weeks before European Parliament elections, but is unlikely to be enacted until next year.
Detailing the law, Mr Macron said minors and patients suffering psychiatric or neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s would not be eligible.
Patients who seek to enter the process will need to reconfirm their choice after 48 hours and they should then receive an answer from a medical team within two weeks.
A doctor will then deliver a prescription, valid for three months, for the lethal medication.
People will be able to take the medication at home, at a nursing home or health care facility, said the president.
If their physical condition does not allow them to take it alone, they will be allowed to get help from someone of their choice, or by a doctor or a nurse.
Mr Macron said that if medical professionals rejected the request, the patient could consult another medical team or appeal.
He added that he wanted to avoid the terms assisted suicide or euthanasia because the patient’s consent is essential, with a role for medical opinion and “precise criteria”.
Several groups representing nurses and palliative care workers under the banner “End of Life Collective” said they were “dismayed” and “saddened” by Mr Macron’s announcement.
This announcement is proposing to “do away with the sick, to do away with the problem at the lowest possible cost”, which “runs counter to the values of care and non-abandonment that
‘There are situations you cannot humanely accept. With this bill, we are facing up to dying’
underpin our French model of support at the end of life”, the group said.
Representatives of the Catholic Church were equally unhappy. “Such a law will steer our entire healthcare system towards death as a solution,” Eric de Moulins-beaufort, the president of the French Bishops’ Conference, told La Croix.
Until now, French patients in pain wishing to end their lives have had to travel abroad, including to neighbouring Belgium.
A 2005 law has legalised passive euthanasia, such as withholding artificial life support, as a “right to die”.
A 2016 law allows doctors to couple this with “deep and continuous sedation” for terminally ill patients in pain.
But active euthanasia, whereby doctors administer lethal doses of drugs, is illegal.
Assisted suicide – whereby patients can receive help to voluntarily take their own life – is also banned.