2023-05-21 14:09:06
“This choice is not linked to our respective positions. A minister ignores his personal opinions anyway when it comes to raising such an issue. » This is how Agnès Firmin Le Bodo evacuates, in an interview with Sunday newspaperthe question of the choice of the minister who will carry the future bill on the end of life.
Because the minister delegate in charge of territorial organization and the health professions announces it to the weekly on May 21: it is she who will be in charge of this text, and not the minister of health, François Braun. However, the first is personally in favor of active assistance in dying, which she supported as a deputy before entering the government, while the second recently expressed his reservations.
In a daily interview The worldon April 8, François Braun, an emergency doctor by profession, had indeed considered that a law authorizing euthanasia or assisted suicide “would profoundly change our society and our relationship to death”. “We will never respond to all situations”, warned the minister, for whom the priority must be to strengthen palliative care and advance directives. He said he did not want active assistance in dying“can impose itself as an obligation on doctors”.
A conscience clause for doctors and caregivers
As a response to these reservations, Agnès Firmin Le Bodo draws up, in the JDDthe list of safeguards that his bill will provide for to regulate active assistance in dying: ban on minors and mentally ill people, vital prognosis engaged ” medium term “, “intact discernment” of the patient… The minister wants “ensure traceability from A to Z” for each request.
Above all, the Minister promises that “doctors and caregivers who do not wish to participate in active assistance in dying will have to be able to invoke a conscience clause from the first stage of the process, when they have to decide on a vital prognosis committed in the medium term”. This conscience clause was also a request from the College of Physicians, opposed to active assistance in dying.
Agnès Firmin Le Bodo also wishes to make it compulsory to “ensure that the patient has been offered palliative care”. “Because most of them no longer wish to die when they benefit from this care”she admits.
A minister at the forefront on the end of life
Regardless of her personal position, the choice of Agnès Firmin Le Bodo to lead this reform is a continuation of the role she has already been playing for several months. The 54-year-old minister, a pharmacist by profession, has indeed been responsible for a large part of the consultation on the end of life with the medical world, parliamentarians, associations or even representatives of religions.
A mission that she already promised to carry out, keeping her opinion at a distance. “I have an assumed personal position, but at no time should it guide the conduct of discussions. I know it and I feel quite capable of it.she assured The cross in September 2022.
It is also its services that are working on the development of the “ten-year plan” for palliative care desired by Emmanuel Macron, which must come to reinforce the 5th development plan for palliative care 2021-2024.
#Agnès #Firmin #Bodo #carry #bill #promises #conscience #clause