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The final chance to save France from assisted suicide was squandered today, as the country’s Constitutional Council upheld legislation legalising assisted suicide and euthanasia in specified circumstances, clearing a major legal hurdle for one of President Emmanuel Macron’s flagship social reforms.
The Council, France’s highest constitutional authority, upheld the legislation in its entirety on Friday, while providing clarification on several provisions governing how the new system will operate.
The law, as it stands, will allow French citizens and legal residents to request medical assistance to end their lives provided that they meet a series of eligibility criteria.
A person must be suffering from an “incurable, life-threatening illness in an advanced or terminal phase.” The condition must also cause constant physical or psychological suffering considered either untreatable or unbearable, while the person must be capable of giving free and informed consent. In practice the free informed consent is impossible to ascertain, and the so-called “safeguards” are watered down with speed.
One particular danger surrounds the legislation’s inclusion of psychological suffering alongside physical suffering when assessing eligibility.
The National Assembly approved the legislation last month by 291 votes to 241, a majority of 50.
Former French prime minister Elisabeth Borne welcomed the Constitutional Council’s ruling, describing it as the culmination of a lengthy parliamentary process.
“I welcome this definitive validation of a text that guarantees everyone the freedom to choose, within a strict and protective framework,” Borne said.
The ruling moves France closer to a growing number of European jurisdictions that permit assisted suicide or euthanasia in some form.
Macron first announced his support for creating a French model of assisted dying following a citizens’ convention on end-of-life issues. The proposals subsequently became the subject of prolonged and contentious debate over safeguards, medical ethics, disability rights, and the potential effect of legalisation on vulnerable people—it was rejected by the French Senate three times.
SPUC’s Executive Director, Michael Robinson, said: “The French National Assembly, backed by President of the Republic, has been unrelenting in its push to change the French medical system to one that intentionally procures death. The Constitutional Court have now joined those institutions in eroding the right to life in France.”
He continued, “Whether it is abortion being enshrined as a constitutional right, or these moves to euthanise the French people, one of the greatest bastions of Western civilisation and proponent of human rights has become a den of death.
“SPUC will not allow the same to happen to Britain.”
