A bill seeking to legalise euthanasia in France has failed after pro-life politicians moved to thwart the legislative process by filing thousands of amendments.
Sponsored by French politician Olivier Falorni, of the French National Assembly, the euthanasia bill failed to pass after almost 3,000 amendments were filed to prevent the legislation from being passed.
Allotted a limited timeframe to present the bill, Libertes et Territoires, Falorni’s splinter party, ran out of time to move forward with the legislation, which the amendments managed to thwart.
Although the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, has previously voiced support for euthanasia, his government did not involve itself in the debate.
If the legislation had been passed, France would have become the fifth European Union nation to decriminalise assisted suicide, after the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and, most recently, Spain, which SPUC reported on last month.
The bill was promoted at the same as a study of people aged 50 and over was published, revealing that the “wish to die” expressed by some participants was ultimately temporary in most cases. The research, reported on by SPUC, was conducted by researchers at Trinity College, Dublin.
SPUC comment
A SPUC spokesperson said: “Euthanasia in the West is being pushed at every opportunity, sometimes successfully, as we have seen most recently in Spain.
“But so long as politicians are prepared to show some backbone and push back against the culture of death and fake compassion, which are at the root of euthanasia, there is still hope, as we have seen in France.
“Euthanasia is a dangerous blight on society that leaves the elderly and the unwell even more vulnerable.
“What the vulnerable require most of all is compassion and care, not a swift and needless death at the hands of a society that increasingly views them as an inconvenience to be got rid of.”
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