After the proposals of the Citizens’ Convention on the climate emptied of their substance during the previous five-year term of Emmanuel Macron, what will happen to the Convention on the end of life? Three-quarters of the 184 citizens who make it up answered “yes” to “active” assistance in dying, specifically assisted suicide or euthanasia, while matching its positions with significant restrictions.
But the Minister of Health François Braun, in charge of the bill that Emmanuel Macron announced “by the end of the summer”, is more reserved, believing that the priority should be “to strengthen the existing” . “The debate on active assistance in dying is still open. A text of law going in this direction would profoundly change our society and our relationship to death”, believes the minister, who is speaking for the first time on the subject in The world. “If society were to move in the direction of active assistance in dying, it could only be in very specific cases and which should be rigorously supervised”, he judges.
Priority to “strengthening the existing”
Current legislation, set by the Claeys-Leonetti law of 2016, allows caregivers to irreversibly sedate patients near death, whose suffering is intolerable. But it does not go so far as to authorize assisted suicide (the patient administers the lethal product himself) or euthanasia (a caregiver injects it).
According to François Braun, even by modifying the law, “we will never respond to all situations”. It’s “each time the end of” a “life and each situation is different”. “Whatever option we put on the table, priority must be given to strengthening what already exists. By greater appropriation of advance directives, by better trained health professionals, by better use of deep and continuous sedation until death: these are tools that we will strengthen by supporting palliative care,” he promises.
The minister says he is “convinced that if we succeed, there will be a lot less requests for assisted dying”. If the legislation were to evolve towards active assistance in dying, then François Braun “does not want it to be able to impose itself as an obligation on doctors” and “does not believe that it must necessarily be done in a medical environment”.