Assisted dying: Bruno Retailleau opposes the proposed law before the debate in the National Assembly

On Saturday, May 10, Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau denounced the bill on assisted dying, which will be debated starting Monday, May 12, in the National Assembly. Singer Line Renaud and former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, now Secretary General of Renaissance, co-signed an article defending it.

This text is "deeply unbalanced" and "breaks all the barriers. It is not a text of appeasement, it is a text of anthropological rupture" , Mr. Retailleau told the Journal du Dimanche regarding the bill tabled by the MP (affiliated with MoDem) for Charente-Maritime Olivier Falorni.

"If it were voted on as it stands, it would become easier to ask for death than to be treated," denounces the Minister of the Interior, campaigning for the presidency of the Les Républicains party, speaking of a text which "is one of renunciation, of abandonment." "I will fight, because our society needs palliative care, not the legalization of euthanasia," warns Bruno Retailleau.

"While no one wants to die, on the other hand, some may want to stop suffering," argue Line Renaud, who is 96, and Gabriel Attal, 36, in the columns of La Tribune on Sunday . For them, "to oppose any change in the law out of conservatism is to put one's dogmatism before the suffering of the sick. It is to fail in one's duty to listen and to be humane in order to impose one's morality." Line Renaud and Gabriel Attal, who chairs the Macronist group Together for the Republic in the National Assembly, are therefore calling for action "to offer the sick freedom of choice."

At the end of April, MPs approved the bill in the Social Affairs Committee to allow patients with a "serious and incurable condition" that is "life-threatening, in an advanced or terminal phase" and who can no longer bear their suffering, to receive or administer a lethal substance.

In April, the Minister of Health, Catherine Vautrin, stated that the provision of assisted dying was "essential for those whose suffering (...) cannot be alleviated" , assuring that this would not create "an anthropological rupture" due to the many conditions set.

In an opinion, the High Authority for Health considered it "impossible" , due to a lack of medical consensus, to determine who could benefit from assistance in dying based on a vital prognosis committed "in the medium term" or on a "terminal phase" of illness, but it suggests taking into account "the quality of the rest of the person's life" .

The text on the end of life was split into two bills, one on assisted dying and the other, much more consensual, on palliative care.