They want things to change. On Wednesday March 15, L’Obs published a manifest signed by 109 personalities in order to question the President of the Republic and to change the law on the end of life.
“Each year, French men and women suffering from serious and incurable illnesses are confronted with physical and moral suffering that treatments can no longer relieve. They ask their doctor to help them die and come up against a refusal. , condemned to suffer a long and painful end of life, in contradiction with their free and thoughtful will”, begins the text signed by Françoise Hardy, Éric Cantona, Line Renaud, Franck Dubosc, Annie Ernaux or Nathalie Baye.
An “unfair” law
And to continue: “Each year, French men and women, who face the same illnesses and the same torments, go abroad to be able to die there, forced to go to countries where assisted suicide and euthanasia are legal practices”. Through this text, the personalities qualify the “French law, which prohibits active assistance in dying” as unfair. Consequently, they call on “the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, as well as parliamentarians to take the measure of these tragedies and to reform the law”.
In the columns of the magazine, the actress Nathalie Baye also pointed out the lack of means implemented to support end-of-life patients with dignity. She remembers her mother’s last days: “I loved her and I couldn’t stand her being treated like that, being left to die in this chaos”. And to conclude:Life belongs to us. Death too. And if one day, I am myself in this state, I would like, in the same way, that we stop the comedy of life”.