France set to give terminally-ill the right to die

The French parliament opened a debate today on what is expected to become a new law that would allow terminally-ill patients the right to die.

While the proposed law would not legalise euthanasia, it redefines the options for the terminally-ill by giving them the “right to die”.

The legislation went before the National Assembly, France’s lower house of parliament, for a first reading to be followed by a final vote on Tuesday. It was expected to win unanimous adoption.

Health Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy has stressed that bans on euthanasia would not change.

“The act of giving death will always be punished by the law,” he said over the summer.

“With this law, the terminally-ill will be able to choose to die,” Douste-Blazy said. “The law will institute the right to die with dignity.”

A long-standing debate over euthanasia in France was renewed last year after the death of Vincent Humbert, a 22-year-old former fire fighter left deaf, mute and paralysed by a road accident.

Humbert 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. She allegedly gave her son a deadly dose of sedatives that induced a coma, and doctors then cut his life support.

In the wake of Humbert’s death, the government began a public survey about whether France should reconsider its ban on mercy killing and a parliamentary commission was set up, which drafted the bill.