French lawmakers were set on Wednesday to vote to legalize medically assisted dying for the terminally ill.
After a legislative tug of war that has lasted more than two years, the law is expected to be passed by a majority of lawmakers in the National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament, overriding the opposition of the upper house, the Senate, where a conservative majority holds sway.
The law would drive one of France’s biggest social shifts in decades and add the country to a tiny group of nations that has legalized a form of euthanasia.
The law would allow doctors to help adult patients to die, but only if those patients are:
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suffering from an incurable, deadly affliction in an advanced or terminal stage
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experiencing pain that is either unbearable or resistant to medication
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able to freely express their will
A doctor and a specialist panel would have 15 days to assess a patient’s request for assisted death. If the request were approved, the patient would have another two days to think through their decision. The patient would then have to administer the lethal substance personally — unless they were no longer physically able to do so, in which case a doctor or a nurse could step in.
Under current French legislation, terminally ill patients have the right to refuse treatment, but a doctor cannot actively help them to die. The families of patients in a coma can also choose to switch off a relative’s life support.
If lawmakers pass the bill, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said that he will refer the legislation to the Constitutional Council, which reviews laws to ensure they conform to the Constitution.
Should that hurdle be passed, France would then join several other countries to have legalized or partly legalized assisted dying. Switzerland, where medically assisted dying became legal in 1942, was long an outlier, until countries including Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain adopted similar laws over the past quarter-century. In the United States, assisted dying is legal in about a dozen states.
Public support for the policy has grown in France since the early 2000s when Vincent Humbert, a young man who became paralyzed, mute and blind after a car crash, campaigned for the right to die in a case that transfixed the country.
The measure has drawn opposition from several quarters, including from religious figures and some health care professionals. Last month, a rally to oppose the bill attracted nearly 4,000 demonstrators in Paris, according to local news outlets.
The law’s opponents in the Senate have said that the legislation requires more safeguards. Gérard Larcher, president of the chamber, told the French newspaper Le Figaro last week, “There are so many reservations about this bill, so much division.”
In a scathing recent opinion column, Michel Houellebecq, one of France’s most famous and contentious novelists, said, “I can’t help but think that by demanding access to euthanasia for its citizens, it’s its own euthanasia that France is demanding.”
President Emmanuel Macron promised to legalize assisted dying while campaigning for re-election in 2022. When the government sponsored a bill to follow through on that promise in 2024, he told journalists that it would require “humility to navigate, to evolve and to accept that one’s convictions may be challenged.”
“With this bill, we’re looking death in the face,” he said.
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