France has moved a step closer to legalising assisted suicide after the country’s National Assembly voted to approve controversial legislation despite the French Senate rejecting the Bill on three separate occasions.
The legislation, one of President Emmanuel Macron’s flagship social reforms, would create a legal right to assisted suicide for certain adults suffering from incurable illnesses. The Bill now heads to France’s Constitutional Council after Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu referred it for constitutional review before it can become law.
The Constitutional Council has the power to strike down all or part of the legislation if it finds it incompatible with France’s constitution.
The assisted suicide Bill has faced years of fierce parliamentary opposition. The Senate rejected the legislation three times, with senators warning that the proposed safeguards were insufficient and that legalising the deliberate ending of patients’ lives would fundamentally alter the role of medicine.
Despite this, the government used constitutional procedures allowing the National Assembly to have the final say.
Under the legislation, adults suffering from an illness deemed incurable who experience severe physical suffering may request assistance to kill themselves. A doctor would assess whether the legal criteria have been met after consulting a panel, before making the final decision. Although the lethal substance would normally be self-administered, healthcare professionals could administer it if the patient were physically unable to do so.
National Rally MP Christophe Bentz described the legislation as “very dangerous” and warned it carried the risk of “abuses,” while senior figures from the conservative Republicans party, which dominates the Senate, remained firmly opposed throughout its passage.
Religious organisations and pro-life campaigners also gathered near the National Assembly to protest against the legislation as MPs prepared to cast their final votes.
President Macron first pledged to legalise assisted suicide following his re-election in 2022, describing it as a major social reform. If the Constitutional Council approves the legislation, France will join Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada, and others, allowing euthanasia and assisted suicide.
Speaking on the matter SPUC CEO John Deighan has said: “Like we have seen at Westminster, the repeated rejection of the Bill by a more learned upper house illustrates the profound ethical concerns surrounding assisted suicide and, in France’s case, euthanasia. We see the same lies across the channel about “adequate safeguards” whilst the ideologues who unceasingly push these death bills never admit that legalising killing will never be safe.”
He continues that, “We hope that the Constitutional Council in France will see the glaringly obvious point that allowing people to be carelessly deprived of life goes against the fundamental principle of every rights declaration in history, and that as we will make happen in Westminster, this move will fail.”
