The National Assembly examines this Thursday, April 8 a bill on euthanasia in France. A social issue that is still debated. In Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, several personalities or citizens have publicized their choice, or will to die. Story.
Chantal Sébire, a life of suffering that moves France
In March 2008, the case of Chantal Sébire made national and even international media headlines. A resident of Plombière-lès-Dijon in the Côte d’Or, she suffers from an incurable cancer. The disease deforms her face and inflicts pain on her that she describes as insurmountable.
In front of the television cameras, she then chooses to testify about what has become of her life. “I’m asking for help to leave because I’m going to go through sufferings that will no longer be measured. »
In order to ” to leave “ with dignity, she then wrote to the President of the Republic at the time, Nicolas Sarkozy and filed a petition with the Dijon tribunal de grande instance. This will be rejected.
In desperation, on March 19, 2008, Chantal Sébire took barbiturates and ended her life.
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Five years later, in 2013, the “Chantal Sébire case” allows the law to be changed in part. After a parliamentary report, the Claeys-Léonetti bill is presented to the National Assembly. Long debated and amended, the text was finally promulgated on February 2, 2016.
It establishes the right to a “deep and continuous sedation” for people with serious and incurable terminal illness. Still in force today, it is considered by many to be insufficient.
Alain Cocq, the end of life live
Twelve years after Chantal Sébire, it is again in Dijon that the debate on the end of life resurfaces. It is this time worn by Alain Cocq. Aged 57, this man is suffering from an incurable orphan disease which severely handicaps him and causes significant suffering. He lives nailed to his bed.
But if his state of health is very degraded, he is almost stationary. Alain Cocq is therefore not considered to be at the end of his life. His case does not fall within the scope of the 2016 law giving access to deep sedation.
In August 2020, Alain Cocq sent a letter to the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron. “Personally, I ask you to be able to benefit, on a compassionate basis, from the right to an end of life in dignity with the active assistance of the medical profession. » Alain Cocq will be received by videoconference by advisers from the Elysée. But unsurprisingly, on September 3, the Head of State replied to him in a letter in which he said to himself “not able” to accede to his request.
“I ask you to vote in favor of these end-of-life bills legalizing active assistance in dying, so that the scandalous situations that we clumsily try to hide so as not to tarnish the reputation of our beautiful country stop. human rights.”
On September 4, 2020, Alain Cocq decided to stop eating and taking his treatments. He chooses to broadcast his programmed agony live on social networks. The video will be blocked by the social network, but the subject is again talking well beyond France.
After a few days, while the suffering linked to the cessation of treatment became unbearable, Alain Cocq was finally admitted to the Dijon University Hospital. The end-of-life protocol that he himself had established is suspended, and he is cared for for a few days in palliative care. He returns to his home a few days later. A month later, Alain Cocq tries again to let himself die before giving up again, because of the physical suffering deemed unbearable.
As the end-of-life debate returns to Parliament on March 31, Alain Cocq addresses an open letter to all parliamentarians. “As representatives of the people, you owe it to yourself to apply the residual will of the latter, yet the latter constantly wishes to have the right to choose assisted suicide or euthanasia, and this at more than 90%”, he wrote. He asks them to “vote in favour” of the various bills on the subject examined in Parliament.
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Paulette Guinchard, a life in the service of the most fragile, a militant death by assisted suicide
Paulette Guinchard died on March 4, 2021 in Switzerland at the age of 71. The former member of the Doubs, was Secretary of State for the elderly under the government of Lionel Jospin.
Suffering from an incurable disease, she decided to die by assisted suicide in Switzerland. Paulette Guinchard knew what awaited her. His father, and his paternal grandmother suffered from this same genetic disease which gradually suppresses motor functions.
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His death by assisted suicide was not concealed. The former elected official unveiled it in broad daylight through a press release from her friend, the president of the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region, Marie-Guite Dufay.
The latter paid a very moving tribute to the former nurse, author of the APA law, the personalized autonomy allowance in 2001.
Until the end, she fought the disease with the weapons that we know her to have: courage, lucidity and determination…until the end, she was in life despite her suffering… throughout her life, Paulette pushed us a lot to reflect and rethink our relationship to aging. His ultimate decision, assisted suicide, which the law of our country does not allow, still invites us to reflect and move forward to better understand the end of life with dignity, conscience and freedom.
Paulette Guinchard left politics in 2007 for health reasons. Very reduced by the disease, she resorted to assisted suicide in Switzerland, the latter is not authorized in France. In Switzerland, several associations offer it, in a very supervised framework. It is the sick person who injects himself the lethal product under the supervision of a third party. In Switzerland, the act of assisted suicide is performed with a dose of 15 g of pentobarbital, a powerful barbiturate not authorized for sale in France. One in 50 deaths in this country is an assisted suicide.
Assisted suicide, euthanasia, sedation until death, where are we in France?
Emmanuel Macron and Jean Castex must listen to the aspiration of the French people to remain masters of their end of life and to have the freedom to choose the moment and the way of extinguishing their own light (…) The Government must listen to the Parliament which demands freedom at the end of life and put an end to the sad Leonetti law which condemns each of us to death in suffering.
This Thursday, April 8, MEPs are examining the bill of deputy Olivier Falorni. The text presented at first reading would open up the possible recourse to “active medical assistance in dying” for any person “capable and of legal age, in the advanced or terminal phase of a serious and incurable condition”, who cannot be “appeased” or judged by she “unbearable”. The text presented at first reading would open up the possible recourse to “active medical assistance in dying” for any person “capable and of legal age, in the advanced or terminal phase of a serious and incurable condition”, who cannot be “appeased” or judged by she “unbearable”.
In France for the moment, the legislation only authorizes continuous sedation until the death of the patient. Assisted suicide is not allowed in France.
The text of the law proposed by MP Olivier Falorni is the subject of an avalanche of amendments, more than 3,000, including 2,300 from a handful of Republican MPs. The hostile parliamentarians argue that it would first be necessary to better apply the current Claeys-Leonetti law, which provides for deep and continuous sedation that can lead to death, but without active euthanasia.
270 deputies from all sides, not far from an absolute majority, gave their support to the bill on euthanasia in France in a column published by the Journal du Dimanche.
End of life glossary
It is a supervised process which leads the sick person to ingest or inject himself the lethal product. The doctor provides this product to the patient under a strict framework.
Euthanasia is a practice aimed at authorizing a doctor to shorten the physical, moral and psychological suffering of a patient suffering from an incurable disease. It is legalized in Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg
It is the interruption of treatments or devices that keep a person alive. It is legal in France.
Palliative care is active care delivered in a global approach to the person suffering from a serious, progressive or terminal illness. The aim of palliative care is to relieve physical pain and other symptoms, but also to take into account
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