The French National Assembly gave final approval yesterday to a bill legalising euthanasia and assisted suicide, making France one of the few European countries to legalise the practice along with Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Spain. Source: EWTN News.
The 291-241 vote came three years after President Emmanuel Macron, who had made it one of his key campaign promises, first opened the question to national debate.
The vote ended an unusual parliamentary stalemate between the National Assembly and the Senate. Members of the National Assembly passed the bill three times over the course of 14 months – most recently on June 30 by a vote of 295 to 232 – and senators rejected it just as many times.
On July 7, the Senate passed, by a narrow majority of 169 to 164, with 11 abstentions, a preliminary motion to outright reject the bill rather than debate it, and this motion itself called on the government to end the legislative process.
Rather than heeding this call, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu invoked Article 45 of the Constitution, which allows the government to give the National Assembly the final say when repeated readings fail to produce an agreement between the two chambers.
He then referred the bill back to the National Assembly for a fourth and final vote instead of a fourth reading in the Senate.
Yesterday’s vote, however, did not close the matter. On Tuesday, Mr Lecornu announced he would refer part of the text to the Constitutional Council, a step Senate President Gérard Larcher had also urged, citing in particular how the billʼs conscience clause would interact with health and social care facilities built around end-of-life accompaniment that exclude assisted dying.
The council must rule within a month, or eight days if the government asks for an expedited review, meaning the law cannot be promulgated until that review is complete even though the Assembly has now adopted it.
The end-of-life law covers both euthanasia, administered by a doctor or nurse, and assisted suicide, in which the patient self-administers a lethal substance.
FULL STORY
France legalises euthanasia after forceful push through Parliament (By Solène Tadié, EWTN News)
