“The Hippocratic oath or the Bible’s ‘Thou shalt not kill’ should not alter thinking about euthanasia”

On December 9, the work of the national consultation on the end of life begins in France. Is France lagging behind its neighbors? The European that I am would say that comparison is not right, but that it is clear that in many European countries, case law and parliaments have made it possible to change legislation on the end of life. With each their exceptions and their specificities, they have managed, through their constitutional and cultural paths, to achieve similar results.

The fact remains that, since antiquity, euthanasia has been divisive and remains an eminently complex subject that only tolerates nuance and subtlety. So the ” I will do everything to soothe the pain. I do not unreasonably prolong the agony. I never deliberately provoke death “of Hippocrates should not come to alter the reflection, any more than the ” You will not kill “ of the Torah or the Bible, nor the “Do not kill the life which Allah has made sacred” of the Koran.

Simplisms, dogmatisms

Why ? Because, on the one hand, the oath traditionally taken by doctors was written in the 4th century BC and has evolved a lot since its first version… And, on the other hand, because since 1905, a 9 December, moreover, a law enacted the separation of Church and State, making France a secular state.

All the questions around assisted suicide and euthanasia do not allow any simple or even simplistic answer. Nor dogmatic. What could be more difficult, indeed, than to look death in the face? Even the members of the National Ethics Advisory Committee showed, for the first time since 2013, differences.

Faced with the suffering of our contemporaries, we can only be unanimous on one point: the recognition of the exceptional work of doctors and carers, often volunteers in palliative care, and the need to grant them more resources.

Values ​​and hierarchy

Far from the precipice, we all recognize that life and freedom are cardinal values. The problem lies in the hierarchy that each of us makes of it. At the gates of death, this hierarchy of values ​​becomes the only truth. Some see respect for freedom as the most “important” aspect of life, leading them to want to legalize euthanasia. Others, on the contrary, put respect for life at the top and oppose it. Both positions are audible.

Personally, it was my travels across Europe that allowed me to meet all the stakeholders and form an opinion on this painful hierarchy. I remember many examples. I could evoke that of Vincent Lambert who divided France, but I feel more legitimate to speak of Eluana Englaro, this young Italian woman plunged into an irreversible vegetative coma following a car accident, which occurred in January 1992 when she was 20 years old. We were in 2009, so she had been kept in this state for 17 years… I fought with other Italian elected officials to respect the wishes of her family, who wanted her to leave. This parliamentary decision divided Italy. But, if she had been able to travel, I am firmly convinced that Eluana would certainly have taken the road to Switzerland to exercise her ultimate freedom of choice.

real democracy

Therefore, we must let our elected officials legislate as they did brilliantly for the Veil law on abortion. This law has in no way solved the ethical problem. This law does not say whether abortion is right or wrong. But it allows anyone to tell him where the edges of the legal are located in relation to those of the illegal, beyond personal beliefs or convictions.

In a world where more and more illiberal democracies are numbing and peoples in their amphigouris, let us rejoice in living in real democracies. We rejoice that religious currents, the medical community, the National Ethics Advisory Committee and all those who want to can make their opinions heard.

Strict safeguards

But above all, let us rejoice in knowing that our parliamentarians can vote freely. I already hear the most critical saying that by legislating our society, hit by crises, breathless by costs, strangled by inflation… could consider people at the end of life as useless and costing too much. It’s a real debate, which we have experienced and which continues to feed through certain national cases, just look at the one taking place in Belgium or the Netherlands. You don’t have to hide your face. This is a danger that should not be minimized.

But, far from wanting to pass a final judgment on the various national cases, I believe that it would be very useful to properly assess the strengths and weaknesses of the solutions already adopted in Europe. The only solution for the legislator is to put in place a law framed by strict safeguards.

Freedom, keyword

At a time of all excesses, it therefore remains crucial to bring back these words of Voltaire: “Use, do not abuse. » In my view, everyone should have the freedom to be able to make the decision of their end of life, according to principles and conditions shared by their community. This forum is not written to list examples but, obviously, the Claeys-Leonetti law cannot cover the prism of all the pain that man can suffer in his flesh…

Freedom is the key word for me. And even if article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 reminds us that “All human beings are equal in rights and dignity”I believe that the legalization of euthanasia or assisted suicide is a matter of freedom.