“Assistance in Dying” bill: Breakdown of solidarity for the most vulnerable
By adopting the right to assisted suicide and euthanasia, cleverly concealed behind the expression “assistance in dying”, the MPs have broken away from the three essential foundations of life in society: solidarity for the most vulnerable, the universal prevention of suicide and the trust between medical staff, patients, and their families.
By lifting the prohibition against killing in a sanitary context marked by the increasing difficulties being experienced by the French public in order to obtain treatments, the MPs have taken a major risk: that the sick will choose an administered death through a shortage of ready access to appropriate care.
Unanimous adoption of the bill for palliative care, although essential, cannot compensate for the deleterious effects of the legalisation of assisted suicide and euthanasia: firstly, because the 10-year strategy for palliative care will be spread over ten years whereas the so-called “assistance in dying” bill, if it becomes law, would be available with immediate effect. Also, because the palliative accompaniment and relief culture is the complete opposite of euthanasia practices, which are inevitably brutal and sometimes expeditious.
From the very outset of the debates, and on the basis of foreign examples, Alliance VITA has alerted against the illusion of a framework of safeguards which are claimed to be strict: it is doomed to be breached as soon as the prohibition against killing is lifted. The text adopted today already confirms the worst fears following the considerable relaxation of the criteria, like for example the end-of-life situation, which has simply been deleted. The current criteria will potentially make hundreds of thousands of people eligible.
When administered death is put forward as a solution against suffering, the despair of vulnerability tends to cloud spirits. The first victims of such despair, are the most fragile, under threat of suicide – in all its forms – and euthanasia.
Making suicide a desirable option and legislating for the State to organise it, contributes to normalise going through with it: incitement to suicide will replace suicide prevention! by consecrating a “right” of access to assisted suicide and euthanasia, MPs are incidentally ratifying an ultra-liberal vision of society, that of everyone for himself where independence takes precedence over interdependence and where the weak are implicitly pushed towards the exit by the strong.
In the current unstable political context and at a time when the French health system is steadily deteriorating, the will of MPs to create a means of access for assisted suicide and euthanasia appears as unjust as it is irresponsible. There is an urgent need to hear the voices of those threatened by these stigmatising laws. In the coming months the legislative process will continue but the outcome is far from certain: the time has come to multiply the actions against all forms of assisted suicide or euthanasia and for widespread access to palliative care and for the availability of pain relief everywhere in France.
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