Euthanasia and assisted suicide: The law of the strongest wins
"We remain the voice of the weakest against the law of the strongest"
The French National Assembly has definitively adopted the bill authorising assisted suicide and euthanasia.
The vote constitutes a deep ethical and social fracture. It marks the end of the French model for the end of life, until now founded on a clear principle : neither therapeutic obstinacy, nor euthanasia.
At a time when our health system is experiencing a severe crisis, that access to treatment and to palliative care remain inadequate for many patients, MPs have chosen to organise death rather than assuming full responsibility for accompaniment, treatment and relief.
Throughout the debates, the words used masked the reality. The expression "assistance in dying" does not describe what the law authorises: the deliberate causing of death by assisted suicide or euthanasia.
Presented as exceptional, the device adopted is in fact widely applicable. It provides access to administered death way beyond mere end of life situations, with extensive eligibility criteria and extremely short time-scales. Such an evolution cannot remain free of consequences.
The law generates a triple fracture :
- It challenges the universally accepted prevention of suicide ;
- It stigmatises the lives of the most fragile as being eligible for shortening ;
- It opens the way for divisions within families, medical staff and society as a whole.
What is being presented as an individual freedom is liable to become, for the most vulnerable, a silent pressure : that of avoidance of being a burden, of costing, of depending on others.
Our mobilisation continues
In confrontation of the law, Alliance VITA, "Solidarity with the most vulnerable", intends to pursue its commitment for the protection of the most afflicted:
- By launching a national campaign to collect testimonies and messages intended for the public authorities;
- By supporting all possible legal proceedings ;
- By establishing a national committee for end of life vigilance, tasked with analysing the strict application of the law and to alert about any abuses ;
- By reinforcing its accompaniment for the most vulnerable ;
- By pursuing its fight for effective access to palliative care for all.
More than ever, we are asserting that every human life possesses an inalienable dignity.
We shall overcome abandonment. We shall be the voice of the weakest opposing the law of the strongest.