This is their last session. Laure and Noëlle will say goodbye this Saturday, April 1 to the red velvet armchairs in the large room of the CESE (Economic, Social and Environmental Council). For the citizens’ convention on the end of life desired by Emmanuel Macron, it’s the end clap. “Even if the adventure was sometimes a little trying, it was a great experience, I didn’t miss a single session”, remarks Laure, professor of law at IUT in Angers (Maine-et-Loire), proud of his assiduity, despite 2 kg taken from snacking on sweets “to compensate”.
“I would have preferred to be drawn to talk about the climate, but hey, debating the end of life was just as essential”, adds Noëlle, Baroussaise by adoption, a little relieved all the same to be over. with his endless round trips to the capital, which forced him to leave his mountains of the Hautes-Pyrénées, at 5 am almost every other weekend.
Hostile at first, Laure voted for access to assisted dying
Tomorrow, after four months of work, the 184 citizen members of this convention will submit a summary of their work to Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne before being received on Monday by Emmanuel Macron. “We made 350 proposals, many concerning palliative care. The territorial network is failing. Mobile units should be able to intervene anywhere in the home, including in remote areas. All these people who are dying without appropriate support, it’s unbearable”, summarizes Laure, who was surprised to change her opinion on active assistance in dying.
“At first, loaded with my certainties, I was hostile to it,” says this fifty-year-old. The day when Swiss and Belgian associations came to explain to us how they proceeded, I felt very uncomfortable. It was so cold, clinical, without affect. Finally, she voted “for” access to assisted dying, convinced that when nothing can come to relieve the pain, “the patient must be able to have the freedom to end it”. “But you need solid safeguards, relatives should not take advantage of them to get rid of a patient who is encumbering them,” she warns.
The Swiss model – where assisted suicide is done through an association – seems relevant to him: “The procedure followed seems to me to be very protective of the person. On the other hand, euthanasia as it is practiced in Belgium makes her very uncomfortable. “To be able to ask for death for psychic pain is going too far! “says this teacher who fears, if we followed the Belgian example” a mechanization of death “, in particular under the pressure of families or relatives more or less well intentioned.
“Legalizing euthanasia would be the worst solution,” says Noëlle, 53. She, too, changed her mind along the way. When she agreed to be part of this “miniature France” called to reflect on the end of life, this mother of two grown-up daughters married to a sheep breeder arrived at the CESE all fired up: “One of my friends very sick was preparing to leave, when the time came, for Spain. I was scandalized that we had to move abroad to die with dignity. »
Until she was stunned by the intervention of Dr. Claire Fourcade, president of the French Society for Support and Palliative Care (SFPA). “There, I understood that we were putting the cart before the horse, that it was first necessary to improve the existing one, while the pleas of the representatives of the Churches hostile to assisted dying left unmoved”.
“I understood that you really have to be determined to end it”
On February 19, at the time of the vote, she found herself in the minority camp of the 19% who answered “no” to the question: “Should the law be changed and open access to assisted dying? Smiling, she confesses: “I know, I am full of paradoxes, my friends tell me so. “But this committed woman who describes herself as” left-wing Catholic, practicing “persists and signs:” You really have to be determined to end it, she argues, when it comes time to take action, an overwhelming majority of people renounce, is what all the experts note. In Oregon (UNITED STATES), only a tiny fraction of terminally ill patients end up using the lethal product that a doctor can prescribe for them. The élan vital takes precedence, that is how it is, and it is of him that we must first take care, ”she insists.
But is the status quo tenable? “No, we must help doctors to develop or have access to a pharmacopoeia to overcome refractory pain. In this area, there are avenues to dig. We must also urgently put the package on palliative care. To kill is too easy. Even in bad shape, our health system has all the human and technical resources to allow a dignified end of life. Instead of trying to copy models from abroad that don’t correspond to our culture, let’s build our own model: don’t legalize anything, above all don’t rush! »