The Hindu : International / Globescan : Right-to-die law passed in France

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Apr 14, 2005

International

International - Globescan

Right-to-die law passed in France

PARIS: France's Parliament gave final approval for a right-to-die law that empowers the terminally ill to refuse life-extending treatments but does not legalise euthanasia. The law was approved with a final vote in the Senate overnight on Tuesday, approving without amendments a text that had already been unanimously approved by the lower House in November. Parliament had sought a middle ground between euthanasia and the current situation in France, where doctors risk prosecution for helping patients die. The new law will enable the terminally ill or those with no hope of recovery to refuse treatments that could extend their lives. Doctors will be allowed to administer painkillers even if their secondary effects include shortening patients' lives. But the law does not allow mercy killings. "The first error would be to decriminalise the ban on killing," said the Health Minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy. "The French are not looking to us to legalise the right to give death." "The ban on giving death remains. Allowing death is not the same as giving death," he said. The law followed renewed debate about euthanasia sparked by the death of a paralysed 22-year-old, Vincent Humbert, who had begged the French President, Jacques Chirac, for the right to die. Humbert, left deaf, mute and paralysed by a road accident, had written a book pleading for the right to die, and his mother, Marie, made it known that the two had a death plan worked out. He died in September 2003 after his mother allegedly gave him a deadly dose of sedatives that induced a coma, and doctors then cut his life support. — AP

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

International

News Update

Stories in this Section

Blair is here to stay

Pleas against Musharraf's dual posts dismissed

Russia opposes U.S. space plan

Japan raises stake in East China Sea, grants rights for drilling

Avian flu could kill 70 million: expert

Vanunu to plead against curbs

Kanishka: Canada House for probe

Right-to-die law passed in France