French religious leaders issued a joint warning to the country’s National Assembly, arguing that a euthanasia bill due to be voted on soon is an “anthropological rupture” that must be avoided. Source: The Tablet.
“We must choose to invest in palliative care, training in listening, and comprehensive support for people until the end of their lives,” said the declaration on May 15.
“This choice is one of humanity over abandonment, relationship over loneliness, and care over resignation.”
The warning, before an expected passing vote on the “right to assisted dying” bill due on May 27, was by the Conference of Religious Leaders in France (CRCF), which represents the Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist communities.
A group of 29 healthcare organisations said on May 13 that the bill was “out of touch” because they wanted more resources, not a change to the current end-of-life law.
The same day, about 500 people in blue smocks – some waving signs saying, “we want care” and “no euthanasia” – held a lie-in protest against the bill on a lawn near the National Assembly.
Legislators have long pressed for a reform of France’s end-of-life law, going beyond “profound and continued sedation until death” to a “right to assisted dying”. Nearby countries such as Belgium, Netherlands and Switzerland have legalised assisted dying.
The CRCF statement said the proposed law “risks exerting a subtle but real pressure on the elderly, the ill or the disabled” to feel they are “being a burden”.
“The proposed law enshrines individual autonomy at the expense of family and social ties,” it said. “It ignores the relational and interdependent dimension of human existence.
“Legalising administered death will not be progress, but ethical, social and medical regression.”
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French religious leaders warn deputies against assisted dying (By Tom Heneghan, The Tablet)
