LThe draft law “on the French end-of-life model”, due to be presented in February, lies on the table of the President of the Republic. The executive branch is faced with the need to respond to blind spots and questions that are currently not resolved by the current legislation and to mark the five-year term with a strong social act without alarming those in charge – not so much in view of that Voter potential threatens a health system that is on the verge of collapse.

The challenge for the executive and the legislature is to avoid a badly cut score, a half-measure that would leave everyone with the impression of unfinished business and lead to this successive revisions have been made over the years, which actually fuels the “fear of deviations”. But is the motto now “as far and as slowly as possible”? Announced by the government in December 2023, the “Ten-year strategy for palliative care, pain therapy, end-of-life care”a brilliant ten-year plan, but superficial and incorporeal, is already thinking about the rest of the text.

As a citizen who is at the same time carer, patient and helper, I would like to identify some moral and political imperatives for a law of progress and courage, with the challenge of leaving no one behind, no patient without an answer to his request for support, no carer Fear of an ethical and deontological backlash. Ten recipes will make it possible to overcome this challenge.

A global law

A global end-of-life text cannot separate palliative care and medical end-of-life care into two texts. If the latter is legalized, it cannot be isolated in a separate text from the general question of the end of life, of which it is one of the aspects.

A just law

The end of life leaves no one behind and proposes conditions and criteria that do not exclude any situation. These will therefore also take into account cases of people who do not have access to assisted suicide for physical or psychological reasons, so that euthanasia is possible in exceptional cases.

A solidarity law

The demand for solidarity does not leave anyone alone in the face of agony and death, especially without medical support adapted to the wishes and needs of the person, including in the case of a request for medical assistance in dying. The prospect of being dismissed by association volunteers or, worse still, simply being prescribed without the subsequent presence of a nurse would be an admission of abandonment.

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