Ladies and gentlemen, there are laws that are not passed like others. The one that will be submitted to your votes on July 15 is one of them. An extraordinary text in the true sense of the term, it proposes a profound modification of our law and our welfare state: it would organize, within the public health code, the possibility for a caregiver to deliberately cause the death of a person, at their request and under certain conditions.
In the name of the law, in the name of the ethics of vulnerability, in the name of the practice of end-of-life support, in the name of the experience of psychological and psychiatric care, and finally in the name of the lived experience of those of us whom this text would make eligible for this new right, we have publicly expressed our opposition to the legalization of the lethal gesture. Because the exception always ends up becoming the norm. Because the right response to the demand for death consists of restoring the taste for living. Because fighting against suffering can never mean eliminating the sufferer.
Many gray areas
But beyond the reasons that we tried to present without having had the opportunity to really be listened to, it is today to your conscience as a legislator that we appeal, on this text precisely. Because it contains many gray areas, imprudence and approximations, which it is up to you to face before voting.
The access criteria are presented to you as restrictive and cumulative. We strongly affirm: this is not the case. The serious, incurable, advanced and life-threatening condition covers a multitude of situations and brings within the scope of the law an indeterminate number of people. The criterion of suffering perceived as unbearable, which is added to it, is subjective in principle: there is no scientific or medical way to judge a person’s suffering.
As for the requirement of a free and informed will, we recall that the desire to die is, by nature, fluctuating, and that this requirement is considerably weakened by the imprecision of the protections provided for people with impaired discernment and for protected adults: unprecedented and dangerous introduction of “severely impaired” discernment as a reason for exclusion, absence of a register of protected adults, absence of obligation to consult an expert doctor.
A new standard of dying
The procedure established in French legislation would be the most hasty and immediately the least supervised in the world: excluding cases of foreseeable death in the short term, its deadlines are twice as short as in Belgium and six times as brief as in Canada, where we have just exceeded 100,000 euthanasias since legalization in 2016. The second doctor can give his opinion without examining the person. As for the overall control of the procedure, it would only be exercised a posteriori, in accordance with the Belgian system, which limits the commission’s action to the production of an annual statistical report.
These inaccuracies pose a formidable threat to all vulnerable people at a time when our public deficits, that of the State, that of Social Security, jeopardize the preservation of our model of common life based on care and solidarity. Because much more than a simple option, this text would establish a new standard for dying. It would mechanically create, in our law, a category of people for whom society would consent to death, and even organize it.
By requiring everyone to consider this possibility for themselves or their loved ones, it would directly threaten the existence of the most vulnerable: elderly people, sick people, depressed people, people with disabilities, protected adults, etc. This statement is not a conjecture: in many situations and in many territories, access to care remains deficient and freedom of choice is rendered illusory, with some immediately giving up support because they are unable to benefit from it.
A mass law
No one should have to choose between suffering and dying. Technical progress, human commitment and political ambition can allow us to spare our fellow citizens from such alternatives. However, this text will provoke them, because it intervenes in a context that each of you knows perfectly well: the care pathway is complex, it precarizes and marginalizes, our social finances are structurally unbalanced, our care offer is partially failing, and the aging of the population will cause needs to increase in considerable proportions. Aid in dying, if passed, would directly compete with already deficient assistance in living.
This is why we solemnly call on you to exercise immense caution when voting, and to remain free with regard to fashion and instructions. Our experiences, our expertise and our analysis of the text lead us to remind you with seriousness: this law is not an exceptional law, it is a mass law. Its wording is imprecise and its current form is only provisional. When in doubt, may the protection of the weakest always prevail.
While the law of May 26, 2026 aimed at guaranteeing equal access for all to support and palliative care was passed unanimously, a large part of the French population is worried about the risks of access to euthanasia and assisted suicide within the framework of a law of the Republic.
Ladies and gentlemen deputies, we place this appeal in your hands, and its outcome for your conscientious arbitration. May your vote tomorrow tell the most vulnerable of our fellow citizens that the Republic will never abandon them.
The authors of this column
Ségolène Perruchio, president of the French Society for Support and Palliative Care (Sfap); Louis Bouffard, co-president of the Les Éligibles collective and their caregivers; Jean-Marc Sauvé, honorary civil servant; Dominique Reynié, general director of the Fondapol ideas laboratory; Didier Sicard, honorary president of the National Ethics Consultative Committee; Emmanuel Hirsch and Laurent Frémont, co-founders of the Democracy, Ethics and Solidarity collective; Marie de Hennezel, clinical psychologist; Raphaël Gourevitch, psychiatrist, representative of the Medical-Psychological Society.
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