2023-12-16 04:00:01
The Élysée dinner is about to end when Emmanuel Macron catches up with the guests. “I have to tell you one more thing.”, blurted the head of state. It’s almost midnight this Tuesday, December 12. The President of the Republic brought together the head of government, Elisabeth Borne, and a handful of ministers in order to decide on the narrow path that will be taken to break the five-year term out of the impasse after the vote, the day before, of a motion to reject which blocks the examination of the “immigration” bill.
It is late but the Head of State wants to discuss one last subject, the end of life. The campaign promise will see the light of day. But “it will be long”, he warns from the ambassadors’ lounge. The text, placed on his desk for several weeks, will rather be examined after the European elections in June. The debates will not be rushed, he warns. Active assistance in dying will be reserved for patients suffering from “incurable diseases” or suffering from “extreme pain”continues the Head of State, specifying that the term euthanasia, which horrifies him, will not appear anywhere in the text.
Above all, work must be done to strengthen palliative care during the next semester. The government must not be accused of helping the most suffering to die in order to free up hospital beds, the Head of State argued to the audience. Silence.
“Storm under a skull”
Emmanuel Macron is finally moving forward on the end-of-life issue. But weighs each term, refusing to delegate the final decisions to anyone. Should we authorize a third party to cause death to others? Or take the single step of assisted suicide? The subject haunts him. The son of a doctor, he is aware that the profession has been able in the past, on a case by case basis, to shorten agonies. But he measures the fierce opposition, today, of some caregivers to the idea of a future law defining the lethal gesture as a medical act that they would be required to perform in the same way as treatment.
At the head of a nation that he knows is fractured, the President of the Republic fears that discussions on this issue, addressing each person’s relationship to death, will hurt the convictions of some and unleash the passions of others. “It’s a storm under a presidential head”observes an advisor to Emmanuel Macron.
These questions are fueled by the frequent discussions that the tenant of the Elysée leads with representatives of religions. The President of the Republic opened up to Pope Francis and regularly converses with the Chief Rabbi of France, Haïm Korsia, who, in 2018, compared euthanasia to the Shoah, during a dinner at the presidential palace. The religious leader has softened his remarks but encourages Emmanuel Macron to exercise the greatest caution. “The subject of the end of life can only be approached with a trembling hand”he whispers Monde.
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