France, Le Monde Libertaire #1693 - Euthanasia: report on end of life (finally) released (fr)

After five months of reflection and no less than a dozen debates, Professor Sicard, former 
president of the National Consultative Ethics Committee, presented his report on end of 
life Francois Hollande. First lesson: it appears from the testimony and many discussions 
with many doctors interviewed in France and abroad, "a concern about the conditions of 
concern, often hidden from the end of life in France and the breakdown of postural 
responses." ---- The more detailed analysis of the results revealed two main observations. 
---- The first emphasizes the one hand, the weak enforcement thirteen years of legislation 
to ensure access to palliative care and, secondly, for ten years, the law on patients' 
rights (Kouchner law) and, finally, for seven years, Leonetti law relating to unreasonable 
obstinacy of the medical profession and the artificial prolongation of life of the patient.

In a first step, we can conclude, based on our reading grid libertarian, that laws are 
obviously not much! Moreover, on a related subject, legislation on abortion have already 
amply demonstrated, they have never prevented some anti-abortion practitioners to give up 
any attempt to patients to practice.

Second observation result of these discussions, is "the particularly dramatic inequalities 
at the end of life." Given this fact, Professor Sicard recommends foremost imperative of 
respect for the patient's speech and autonomy. And to recommend "the requirement to apply 
existing laws firmly than ever to imagine new," noting in passing "utopia solve by law the 
complexity of end of life situations."

The rapporteurs also highlight "the danger of crossing the barrier of a prohibition, if 
the legislature took responsibility for the decriminalization of assisted suicide." Also, 
they emphasize two major points to their senses strict guarantees of freedom of choice in 
demonstrating the autonomy of the person and the need to involve primarily the 
responsibility of the state and the responsibility of the medicine.

Regarding another aspect of the problem, if the legislature took responsibility for the 
decriminalization of euthanasia, the commission intends to warn about the symbolic 
importance of this change not because, she says, "euthanasia deeply involved the idea that 
society is the role and values ??of medicine, "adding that" any movement of a prohibited 
necessarily create new situations limits, prompting an indefinite new laws "and that" any 
medicine has its share of action on the edge of life without the need to legislate every 
time. " A speech which is not displeasing to us, we libertarians and supporters of the 
right to die chosen, quite the contrary ...

At the end of the report, the experts of the Commission wished to emphasize that "the 
future of humanity boils down to the assertion of an limitless personal freedom, 
forgetting that human beings can live and invents as connected to others and dependent on 
others. Real support end of life only makes sense in the context of an inclusive society 
which does not replace the person, but it shows respect and listen to the end of his life. 
" We anarchists would not have expressed better!

However, he can only hope that these few thoughts will be heard by the government and 
especially legislators to finally, in France, we have the right to dignified death, 
whatever the apologists called "respect for life" that hides so badly nauseating stench of 
fundamentalist militants click "provie!"
Patrick Schindler