Assisted dying: Retailleau opposes the text, Line Renaud and Gabriel Attal defend it
By The New Obs with AFP
Published on
">Bruno Retailleau at the Elysée Palace, May 7, 2025. XOSE BOUZAS / HANS LUCAS VIA AFP
Bruno Retailleau opposes the bill on assisted dying, which will be debated starting Monday in the National Assembly. This text is "deeply unbalanced" and "breaks all the barriers. It is not a text of appeasement, it is a text of anthropological rupture," asserts the Minister of the Interior in an interview with the far-right media outlet "Journal du Dimanche."
"If it were voted on as it stands, it would become easier to ask for death than to be treated," denounces the LR minister, 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, regarding the bill tabled by Olivier Falorni (affiliated with Modem).
"While no one wants to die, some people may want to stop suffering," argue Line Renaud, who is 96, and Gabriel Attal, 36, in the columns of "La Tribune Dimanche", where they co-signed a column defending him .
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."
A text split into two proposed lawsAt 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.
Health Minister Catherine Vautrin said last month that the provision of assisted dying is "essential for those whose suffering (...) cannot be alleviated" , ensuring that this does not create "an anthropological rupture" due to the multiple conditions set.
Also read
Investigation: Before considering the end of life, isn't there room for living better thanks to psychedelic therapies?
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 engaged "in the medium term" or on a "terminal phase" of illness, but it suggests taking into account "the quality of the rest of life" of the person.
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.
By The New Obs with AFP
