President Emmanuel Macron appears undecided whether to change France’s laws on end-of-life care, hesitating between politicians seeking to legalise assisted suicide and religious leaders deeply concerned about any changes.
French law allows patients near death to be medically put into deep sleep to ease pain until they die, but after public discussions organised last year showed support for wider limits Macron seemed to promise a new law.
Religious leaders recently invited to a dinner-debate at the Élysée Palace expected a decision from the president, but found Macron still struggling with the issue. They had already been invited a year ago to discuss the same question with him.
Various forms of voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide have been legal in neighbouring countries such as Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands and Switzerland for a decade or more. Spain passed such a law in 2021.
The Bishop of Nanterre Matthieu Rougé, representing the Catholic bishops’ conference at the dinner, reported that Macron had listened attentively and seemed to favour a very limited opening towards assisted suicide, though the bishop questioned whether such limits could work.
“When we claim to regulate so-called ‘restricted active assistance in dying’, how can we not open a door that is impossible to close toward all kinds of challenges to the dignity of fragile people?” Rougé asked.
“He’s walking along a philosophical ridge and we don’t see how this can be translated into a legal text,” said Pastor Christian Krieger, head of the French Protestant Federation, of Macron’s apparent indecision.
Besides Rougé and Krieger, Orthodox, Buddhist and Jewish leaders attended the dinner. No Muslim participant came, although Islamic leaders have joined other faiths in opposing changes to the law.
Macron is used to brooding over bioethical dilemmas. The son of two doctors, he became a Catholic aged 12, studied philosophy and was once an aide to French Protestant philosopher Paul Ricoeur.
He has been more decisive on abortion, where public support is stronger. Legalised in 1975, abortion rights look set to be guaranteed this year in France’s constitution – a response to their revocation from the US constitution in 2022.
After the National Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favour in an initial vote in January, Vatican News said that France was “moving towards a constitution against life”.
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