Macron announces a bill to legalize euthanasia in a restricted manner

File photo of the president of France, Emmanuel Macron.

Paris- The president of France, Emmanuel Macron, announced the presentation in April of a law on dying with dignity, although with a series of restrictions on its access, and acknowledged that he was moved by the letter he received from the famous singer French Françoise Hardy, sick with lymphatic cancer since 2004.

In a joint interview with the Catholic publication “La Croix” and the progressive “Libération”, Macron clarified that the law that will be presented to Parliament “is not assisted suicide” nor “euthanasia as such.”

The leader pointed out that the project includes a series of criteria that restrict access, distancing this rule from Swiss legislation, a country that recently helped the Parisian filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard (91 years old) die.

Restricted euthanasia

The president cited four conditions: it will be reserved for the elderly; Those affected will have to have clear discernment (which excludes Alzheimer’s patients); They will have to suffer an incurable disease with a fatal prognosis in the short or medium term; and the patient’s physical and psychological suffering will be evaluated.

“This is a law of fraternity because it allows us to choose the least bad when death is at the door,” said Macron , who has just promulgated the protection of access to abortion in the French Constitution.

The president explained that the text will first go through the Council of State to examine its conformity with the Magna Carta and that it will only be before the Council of Ministers in April, with a first reading in May.

“In a text with so many challenges, we are not going to ask for it to be processed urgently,” said the Head of State, who did not want to venture as to when this text could be approved.

2016 legislation

Macron’s party, Renaissance, and its allies have a relative majority in the Lower House and will need support, on the left or the right, to be able to approve the norm, something far from being taken for granted.

The French president acknowledged that he was moved by the letter sent to him by Hardy, who is 80 years old and terminally ill with cancer: “I have received numerous letters, among them the one from Françoise Hardy, which moved me very much. Artists and other anonymous people are committed to this issue.”

France has legislation from 2016 that allows patients “in agony” to stop taking medication and enjoy palliative care, without going any further.

According to polls, 70% of French people are in favor of a law that legalizes euthanasia , a term that Macron himself, the son of doctors, avoids uttering publicly.

Jean-Luc Romero-Michel, honorary president of the French Association for the Right to Die with Dignity, was pleased that the project is finally going to Parliament, but criticized that the last decision falls exclusively and collegially on a medical team.

“This does not happen in any country that has euthanasia regulated,” Romero-Michel said in statements to “Franceinfo”, who hoped that parliamentarians would modify the original project and end up facilitating access.

BY: TTU