French MPs will on Tuesday vote on two landmark bills on palliative care and assisted dying. They’re the result of months of debate shaped by a rare democratic experiment that brought together 184 randomly selected citizens to grapple with one of society\u2019s most intimate and divisive questions: how should we die?<\/p>\n
Marc-Olivier Strauss-Kahn was on a high-speed train in November 2022 when his phone rang. The 71-year-old retired economist had no idea he was about to join what he would later describe as “the best social experience of my life”.<\/p>\n
The caller invited him to join France’s citizens’ convention on end-of-life care \u2013 President Emmanuel Macron’s bid to involve the public in a national conversation about assisted dying<\/a>.<\/p>\n France\u2019s current 2016 law<\/a> allows for \u201cdeep and continuous sedation” for terminally ill patients, but assisted suicide \u2013 where a patient takes a lethal drug themselves \u2013 and euthanasia <\/a>\u2013 where a third party administers it \u2013 remain illegal.<\/p>\n The convention was asked to answer one question: \u201cIs the way we accompany those approaching the end of life adapted to the different situations which emerge, or do we need to introduce changes?\u201d<\/p>\n Strauss-Kahn was curious to explore a topic that concerns everyone. \u201cWe\u2019re all going to die at some stage,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n He was also intrigued by the novel format. \u201cHow can you make so many people work together when they don\u2019t know each other and they have so many different backgrounds?\u201d<\/p>\n Read more on RFI English<\/a><\/p>\n Read also:
French lawmakers open tense two-week debate on assisted dying<\/a>
French PM under fire for plans to split controversial assisted dying bill<\/a>
French citizens group in favour of allowing euthanasia, assisted suicide<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"French MPs will on Tuesday vote on two landmark bills on palliative care and assisted dying. They’re the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2935,2000,299,36,59045,59044,12840],"class_list":{"0":"post-134342","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-assisted-dying","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-france","12":"tag-french-citizens","13":"tag-palliative-care","14":"tag-president-emmanuel-macron"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114576485483381400","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}