This certainly seems to be the view behind legislation, set to be debated in the French parliament today, that would allow what President Emmanuel Macron calls “assisted dying”. Choosing his words carefully, he said lethal injections, pills or drinks would be made accessible to adults who are “capable of full and complete discernment”, while suffering from incurable diseases.

Macron insists on the expression “help in dying” because it describes a process that is “simple and humane”, he said, but opponents accuse him of reducing the highly contentious debate to semantics. Getting someone to assist with another person’s death is quite obviously a variation of euthanasia, and, indeed, medically assisted suicide.

The arguments are particularly bitter in France, where there is a perennial divide between a fiercely secular, technologically driven state, and a far more traditional country rooted in Roman Catholicism and old-fashioned family values that include looking after someone from cradle to grave, no matter their condition.

A measure introduced eight years ago called the Claeys-Leonetti Law allows for chronically ill patients to receive “deep and continuous sedation”. Those who objected to it described it as permitting legally authorised coma, and suggested it was yet another step on the road to full-blown euthanasia.

Thus the strength of feeling over the latest move. Beyond Christians, as well as Muslim and Jewish faith groups, plenty of members of the medical profession are furious. Associations involved in numerous spheres, including cancer care, published a joint statement in March saying Macron had “with great violence announced a system far removed from patients’ needs and health workers’ daily reality”.

They are particularly upset at the President’s vague reference to a “medical team” that will come to a final decision as to whether a patient is entitled to ending life treatment. The legal complexities of such a process are widespread, as illustrated in Spain, where both euthanasia and assisted dying are technically legal but rarely authorised. The result is a surge in legal cases that invariably last for years and cause a huge amount of stress and anguish for those concerned, while costing millions that might ordinarily be spent on actual medical care.

Once again, Macron’s notorious propensity to support both sides in a debate is coming to the fore. He wants to appease the pro-euthanasia lobby with weak legislation, while bizarrely telling opponents that allowing assisted death will not be a “new law nor a freedom”.

As France approaches European Parliament elections next month, the far-Right Rassemblement National is surging ahead in the polls, and Macron’s centrist Renaissance group is facing a trouncing. There is every indication that Macron is trying to be something to everyone, to impress as many potential voters as possible, however cynically. In matters of life and death, this is seldom a wise strategy.

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Nabila Ramdani is a French journalist and academic of Algerian descent, and author of Fixing France: How to Repair a Broken Republic.

NabilaRamdani

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