DIn order to thoroughly discuss the right to euthanasia, one must consider the “side effects” that this change will bring about in our society’s relationship to life, to others and to intimacy. There are two clear boundaries in the law: it is forbidden to kill others, even at their request, and suicide is not forbidden.

However, if every individual is “free” to end their life, this gesture is neither a right nor a freedom in a legal sense, there is no legal instrument that guarantees this. On the contrary, our law requires us to help the person who is trying to end his life. No matter what motives underlie a suicidal gesture, how clairvoyant the perpetrator is and how autonomous his will is: the Criminal Code punishes failure to provide assistance to a person in danger if someone does not try to save a person.

The law even allows, within strictly defined limits, a person to be hospitalized without their consent to be treated for depression that deprives them of any will to live and of their judgment. Healthcare providers are also liable to prosecution if they fail to fulfill their monitoring obligations and the hospital patient they care for ends their life.

Establish legal criteria

This set of rules testifies to two essential values ​​that underlie our social contract and permeate all laws: the originality of life and the duty of solidarity. From these crossed and absolute values ​​- because for their implementation there is no subjective judgment about the kind of life that society wants to support – arise subjective rights for the benefit of vulnerable people, guidelines for dealing with disabilities and the prevention of disabilities. Suicide . The latter are crucial in a country like France, where the suicide rate per capita is one of the highest in Europe.

If the law were to guarantee individuals the freedom to commit suicide and others the obligation to assist them in the name of respecting their will, how would these rights and obligations be reconciled? Clearly, reform advocates do not want the policy to be abandoned in favor of the most vulnerable.

However, overall consistency can only be maintained by establishing legal criteria that strictly regulate this right. Will arise ipso facto An even more difficult question: the question of who is legally entitled to receive euthanasia. The person at the end of life who is not relieved by anything? The young anorexic girl who stubbornly refuses to eat and whose life hangs by a thread? The person who is not at the end of his life, but whose mental suffering and the threat of illness have finally deprived him of any desire to live? The prisoner sentenced to years in prison who no longer wants to continue for reasons of conscience? The senile old man who asked for euthanasia in case he went crazy?

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