End of life : Moving on to the real priorities!

In the aftermath of the European election results, Emmanuel Macron announced the dissolution of the French National Assembly. This has resulted in the interruption of all the legislative work in progress including the debate on the end of life bill.

Introduced by the bill under the deceitful expression “assistance in dying”, assisted suicide and euthanasia were adopted by the MPs present for the intermediate votes. The pressure by their promoters will not go away with the ending of the term.

According to Alliance VITA, vigilance is therefore key, especially as the debates have shown what the association has been denouncing for years : no framework can ever withstand the lifting of the prohibition against killing. In two weeks of discussions – and against the will of the government which claimed to insist on the “balanced nature” of its initial text – several safeguards have already been breached, including the temporal aspect of the threatened life expectancy in order to gain access to the so-called “assistance in dying”.

According to Tugdual Derville, the spokesman for Alliance VITA : “Assisted suicide and euthanasia are in fact unmanageable: nobody can be unaware that lifting the prohibition against killing which is always claimed to be partial leads inevitably to an uncontrollable situation; the risk in kindling such a fire, is the rapid exposure to a backfire. As already experienced by the current government.”

Alliance VITA was moreover quite right in denouncing the exploitation of palliative care as an excipient for euthanasia and assisted suicide. Mind that it does not fall collateral victim to the dropping of the bill : the priority for the coming government must be to deploy ambitious means such that its access can be guaranteed for all who need it, nationwide. It is a question of justice and social equity.

The examination of the text by the MPs revealed the extent to which the debate could be disconnected from the priorities of the people, such as the cost of living, security and the health system. The French people in fact are hoping for the resolution of the crises affecting the health system: crisis of public hospitals and retirement homes, medical wildernesses, difficulty of access to care.

Even more they expect the next government, whichever it might be, to have a long-term vision and that it deals with the major socio-sanitary challenges such as ageing. Moreover, since 2017, we are still waiting for a law for old age to meet the major challenge of dependence.

More than ever, Alliance VITA therefore remains mobilised against euthanasia and assisted suicide, for universal access to palliative care and for the finalisation of a law for “old age”.