“Who can believe that the announced debate is anything other than a masquerade? »

by time news

President Macron had promised, just after his election in 2017, a peaceful and serene debate on bioethical issues. Shortly after, Jean-Louis Touraine was appointed rapporteur for the commission for the revision of bioethical laws, whose personal positions on all these questions left no doubt as to the outcome of the consultations. Can we really speak of a respectful debate and serious collective discernment?

Mr. President Macron then initiated a citizens’ convention on ecological issues, the method was intended to be innovative and democratic, he had promised that he would keep all the proposals “without filtering anything”. Who can deny that the disappointment was immense and that the mountain gave birth to a mouse?

The two CCNE conditions

The National Consultative Ethics Committee (CCNE) has just given its opinion on the issues of euthanasia and assisted suicide. In a text full of contradictions, he expresses an opinion which has been presented as favorable to an evolution on these subjects. But a careful reading of the document shows that it submits this development to two conditions: the evaluation of the reception and implementation of the Claeys-Leonetti law as well as the development of palliative care (currently 23 departments do not have it) .

All professionals in the field say it and repeat it, these two conditions are not currently met. How to explain that this opinion is mainly presented in the media as favorable to a new legislation?

Ms. Agnès Firmin Le Bodo has just been appointed head of end-of-life consultation. While affirming that her personal position – pro-euthanasia – will not influence her way of carrying out the consultation, she has just declared that “the time has come for the government to stop procrastinating and assume its job as legislator”. Who can still believe that the announced debate is anything other than a masquerade?

An odious method

All these debates, these consultations and these consultations look furiously like a staging of which the citizens are at the same time the actors, the spectators and finally the accomplices. The method is odious.

For each of us, there are two options. Either I boycott this consultation, and I become a bad citizen who runs the risk of being told, as the president has already said of those who refused to take part in the National Council for Refoundation, that ” The absent are always wrong “. Either I participate, as a good citizen, but taking the risk – perhaps even worse – of being exploited and legitimizing an initiative whose sincerity remains to be established.

What to do then? First denounce the method, the postures and the lack of courage that hides there. Then, criticize the ideology and return to reality, which is infinitely complex, humbly recognizing that we would all benefit from listening first to those who, in the field, in the palliative care centers, accompany them to the end, and in the dignity, the life of our sick or dying brothers and sisters. Doctors, nurses, psychologists, volunteers have something to tell us. How to understand that they are so little listened to, in France, in Belgium or elsewhere, when their words are so convergent?

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