Françoise Hardy in 2009. PATRICK KOVARIK / AFP
Suffering from two cancers, the singer suffers martyrdom. In La Tribune Sunday, she addresses a letter to the head of state.
“Her life has become so painful that we sometimes wonder if it would not have been better to let her go when she came close to death eight years ago.” Thomas Dutronc, son of François Hardy, admitted to RTL in November: his mother can’t take it anymore. Exhausted by illness, the singer, aged 79, suffered martyrdom. Victim of cancer of the lymphatic system and cancer of the pharynx, she has great difficulty eating. And, after more than fifty radiotherapies, she says she is imprisoned in her body, waiting for the end. So she confided this week, she wants to “leave soon and quickly”. French law would still have to authorize it. This is why François Hardy, in a very moving letter published by La Tribune Sunday calls on the President of the Republic and relaunches the debate on the end of life. The singer asks Emmanuel Macron to show“empathy” and that he “allows French people who are very ill and without hope of getting better to stop their suffering when they know that there is no longer any relief possible”.
She would like a law to reduce the suffering of those who, she says, feel they are suffering needlessly. As proof, she cites her stay at the clinic where “cancer patients with their second or third recurrence couldn’t take it anymore.” And cites the case of her own mother who, victim of Charcot’s disease, an incurable illness, was able to benefit from the understanding of “two understanding and courageous doctors”, she says, so that her own mother did not go to the end of “this unbearable illness”.
Faced with this poignant testimony from Françoise Hardy, Agnès Firmin Le Bodo, Minister Delegate for Territorial Organization and Health Professions, responded, still in La Tribune Sundaythat a bill concerning end-of-life support and assistance with access to assisted dying will be examined in 2024. A text which would include three parts, one on palliative care, another on patients’ rights and a last one, that demanded by François Hardy, on assisted dying.