French President Emmanuel Macron announced on Sunday that a draft law opening the way for “assisted dying under strict conditions” will be submitted in April to the Council of Ministers to be presented to the National Assembly for a first reading in May.
Macron told La Croix and Liberation newspapers that adult patients “who can fully and completely differentiate” and who suffer from “an incurable disease that is incurable in the short or medium term and whose pain has no way to be alleviated” will be able to “request assistance with the aim of dying.”
Therefore, minors and people with psychological or neurological diseases that affect the ability to discriminate, such as Alzheimer’s disease, will be excluded.
If a positive collective opinion is obtained from a medical team, a lethal substance will be prescribed to the person concerned, who will be able to take it himself or with the help of another person if he is “physically incapacitated.”
Even if this act could be compared to a form of medically assisted suicide, the president stressed that he wanted to avoid this term or the term euthanasia, because the controversy around this topic is great in France.
The current law, the most recent version of which dates back to 2016, allows “deep and continuous sedation” for patients who have no hope of recovery in the short term and suffer from pain that cannot be alleviated, but it does not allow assisted suicide or “euthanasia.”
The French President also announced the strengthening of palliative care.
He added that within ten years, “we will invest an additional billion euros in this field,” in addition to the 1.6 billion euros currently allocated to supportive care.
Changing the 2016 end-of-life law was one of the election promises made by Emmanuel Macron during his election campaign, but after forming a citizens’ conference on this issue, he postponed his decision several times.
Macron, who has been intending for some time to amend French law in this sensitive issue, said that he wrote his “directives in advance” regarding the care that a person wants or does not want to receive as the end of his life approaches.
It is noteworthy that in many European countries the law allows euthanasia and/or medically assisted suicide. Belgium, along with the Netherlands, was the first two European countries to legalize euthanasia 20 years ago.
In Spain, a law allowing assistance in ending life entered into force in June 2021, allowing euthanasia and medically assisted suicide, while Switzerland applies different methods of assisted death.
Source: Arabic
