In a Nutshell

France’s Assemblée nationale has been examining an end-of-life bill creating a right to assisted dying. France Inter reports that deputies accepted an individual conscience clause for health professionals but rejected a collective or institutional clause that would have permitted, under conditions, certain establishments not to engage, at the institutional level, with assisted dying.

Basically, in the draft law, all relevant establishments must allow health professionals and third parties to intervene for the purpose of assisted dying. An amendment proposed a different model: establishments would not be required to participate in assisted-dying procedures, but any refusing establishment would have to inform the patient or requesting professional without delay and identify a willing establishment or service.

The key question is whether one should or could respect the ethical project of mission-driven care providers.

Our Take

Under our decision legitimacy framework, a democratic majority may of course create a right to assisted dying. However, this law creates a positive obligation, in addition to granting an individual right. Since the law touches on a morally-charged question, our take is that, as long as the assisted-dying right is secured, the State may tolerate that mission-driven establishments be exempted from hosting the act.

At the very least, the State should have been able to demonstrate why less intrusive means would be insufficient. That matters for religious and non-religious institutions alike: palliative-care providers, associative homes, medico-social establishments and charter-based care projects all depend on trust that their institutional purpose will not be overwritten unless strictly necessary.

Majority rule crosses into overreach when it treats every pluralist accommodation as obstruction.

Read the public legislative material at the Assemblée nationale: https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/17/amendements/AMANR5L17PO838901BTC2453P0D1N001878