End-of-life bill: forty-six years of debate and legislation in eight dates
AFP
1980 First debate in the Senate on the first bill relating to the right to die, tabled in April 1978 by the senator for Lot-et-Garonne, Henri Caillavet (left-wing radical). This text, which anticipates, almost thirty years in advance, the legislation currently in force since the Leonetti law of 2005 which authorizes the cessation of treatment, is intended to allow an incurable patient to withdraw from all treatment, without the medical profession being worried by legal proceedings. It is finally rejected in public session on May 7, 1980. The Association for the Right to Die with Dignity , which campaigns for every French person to be able to choose the conditions of their own end of life, is founded the same year.
1999 The right to access palliative care was enshrined in law on June 9, 1999.
2005 On April 22, 2005, following the emotion aroused by the request to die of the young quadriplegic Vincent Humbert , finally helped by his mother and his doctor, France adopted the Leonetti law on the end of life. It gives any adult the possibility of drafting, at any time, a written document, called an advance directive, prohibits therapeutic obstinacy and authorizes the patient to request the cessation of his treatments. It stipulates that medical acts "must not be pursued with unreasonable obstinacy. When they appear useless, disproportionate or have no other effect than the sole artificial maintenance of life, they can be suspended or not undertaken. In this case, the doctor safeguards the dignity of the dying person and ensures the quality of his life by providing palliative care."
2008 Chantal Sébire , 52, a patient suffering from an incurable facial tumor that causes her excruciating pain, requests exceptional authorization from the courts to obtain a lethal potion, claiming the "right to die with dignity." Her request is rejected on March 17 by the Dijon High Court, under the Leonetti law, which only allows for the limitation of useful therapies and the initiation of comfort therapies at the end of life which, although allowing the acceleration of death, do not make it a therapeutic objective. Chantal Sébire commits suicide by massive ingestion of barbiturates , two days later, on March 19. Her fight rekindles the debate on euthanasia. A mission to evaluate the Leonetti law is launched. If the "euthanasia exception" is rejected, an End of Life Observatory is created.
2011 Senators abandon the idea of introducing “medically assisted dying” .
"Everyone has the right to a dignified end of life, accompanied by the best possible relief from suffering."
2016 The law of deputies Jean Leonetti and Alain Claeys, of February 2, 2016 , and its implementing decrees law of February 2, 2016 relating to collegiate procedures and the use of deep and continuous sedation until death and advance directives, creates new rights for patients and people at the end of their lives. It provides that: "Everyone has the right to a dignified end of life accompanied by the best possible relief of suffering."
2023 The Chauvin report, submitted in December 2023, proposes a ten-year strategy for palliative care, pain management and end-of-life support. Among the fifteen measures proposed is the creation of 100 support homes within ten years, to accommodate terminally ill patients and provide temporary respite for caregivers.
2024 In a double interview with the daily newspapers "La Croix" and "Libération", the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, announced on March 10, 2024 the upcoming presentation of a bill which should open up the possibility of assisted dying under certain strict conditions.
While the MPs' examination of the end-of-life bill was due to enter its third and final week on Monday, June 10, with the criteria for access to "assisted dying" having been approved on Friday, June 7, the dissolution of the Assembly by the Head of State has brought the examination of the next articles, related to the procedure for implementing the request for a lethal act, to a halt. According to parliamentary regulations, the end of a legislature renders bills currently being read before the National Assembly null and void. This is to the great dismay of those involved for more than a year and a half in the national debate, launched by the Head of State in September 2022.
