the bill on the end of life adopted in committee at the National Assembly

A first obstacle overcome without great difficulty, at the end of an intense week of debates. The deputies approved in committee, shortly after midnight on the night of Friday May 17 to Saturday May 18, the bill opening for the first time in France a “assisted dying” for certain patients, after having modified one of the eligibility criteria during the debates, which made some fear a disruption of the balance of the law.

The criterion according to which patients must have their “vital prognosis engaged in the short or medium term” to access assistance in dying has been replaced by the notion of affection “in advanced or terminal phase”, against the advice of the government but with the approval of the general rapporteur Olivier Falorni, member of the MoDem group. The latter, who pointed out during the debates the “great difficulty in establishing what the medium term was”, welcomed the vote of a “great beautiful republican law”.

“The patient may wish, since he is struck by a serious and incurable illness, not to experience the horrors of the illness, even if his vital prognosis is not directly involved”for their part underlined several socialist deputies in the explanatory statement of the reasons for their amendment.

The president of the commission, Agnès Firmin-Le Bodo (Horizons, also a member of the presidential camp), voted against this modification. “Removing the short and medium term, very clearly, we are no longer in the same law at all. We are in a law which can allow people whose vital prognosis would be compromised in the long term, who may have refractory physical suffering, to ask to die. It is not the balance of the law that was desired and that was presented”she warned.

A section on palliative care

The Minister of Health, Catherine Vautrin, also spoke out against this rewriting, arguing that it would have the consequence, contrary to the intentions of its supporters, of restricting the field of people eligible for patients. “at the extreme end of life”. The deputy (Les Républicains) Annie Genevard, hostile to the bill, expressed her “astonishment” after removing this “essential lock”.

The text, which is due to arrive on May 27 in the Hemicycle, plans to establish the possibility for certain patients to ask a doctor to be helped to commit suicide, via a lethal substance that they would administer themselves or that a third party could administer to them if they cannot do so.

In addition to being affected by “serious and incurable condition in advanced or terminal phase”, to be eligible, patients must be of age, able to express their wishes in a free and informed manner, and present suffering that is refractory to treatment or unbearable. The deputies ruled out the opening of the right to die for minors, as well as the possibility for patients who could not express their wish to be euthanized on the basis of their advance directives.

Another hotly debated point is that of the collegiality of the decision. An amendment proposed by rapporteur Laurence Cristol (Renaissance) clarified that the doctor who makes the decision to authorize assistance in dying will do so. “as part of a multi-professional collegial procedure”. The right denounced a “lure”a “Canada Dry collegiality”.

The government text also includes a section on palliative care. The deputies succeeded in having an amendment adopted against the advice of the government in favor of a “enforceable right” to benefit from this care, while one in two people do not have access to it today.