End of life: how the hearings will take place which start this Monday, April 22 at the National Assembly

Les auditions se dérouleront à l’Assemblée nationale. MAXPPP – Alexis Sciard

C’est ce lundi 22 avril que la commission spéciale chargée de débattre du projet de loi sur la fin de vie se réunit la première fois. La ministre de la Santé Catherine Vautrin sera la première à être entendue.

The 71 deputies, from all political backgrounds, who make up the special commission responsible for debating the bill on the end of life are meeting for the first time this Monday, April 22. The commission is chaired by former Minister of Health Agnès Firmin-Le Bodo. Olivier Falorni, Modem deputy, will be the general rapporteur, assisted by four co-rapporteurs, Laurence Maillard-Méhaignerie (Renaissance), Didier Martin (Renaissance), Caroline Fiat (La France insoumise) and Héraultaise Laurence Cristol (Renaissance ).

The Minister of Health Catherine Vautrin will be the first to be heard, at 6 p.m.

Will follow, throughout this week and until April 30, representatives of religions, members of the Citizens' Convention, health professionals, sociologists, philosophers…

The following will be heard: Jean-François Delfraissy, president of the National Consultative Ethics Committee (CCNE); Régis Aubry, member of the CCNE, palliative care doctor at Besancçon University Hospital, Alain Claeys, co-author of the Claeys-Leonetti law of 2016…

A text for first reading on May 27

The debates will undoubtedly be heated: "Robert Badinter would have supported this text. To claim the opposite would be a betrayal of his thought and his memory", declared his widow, the philosopher Elisabeth Badinter, who made public, on Sunday April 21, a letter to Olivier Falorni who takes the opposite view of the opponents of the reform.

She denounces: "For many months and even more recently, I have been able to see that my husband's words were used, to not to say exploited, by opponents of any legislative development on this subject".

On Sunday April 21, again, caregivers not invited to the debates demonstrated their "incomprehension", in a letter consulted by Le Figaro.

At the end of the hearings, a text will be examined at first reading, from May 27, at the National Assembly.