Professionals

France legalizes euthanasia after forceful push through Parliament #Catholic The French National Assembly gave final approval on July 15 to a bill legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide, making France one of the few European countries to legalize the practice along with Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Spain. The 291-241 vote came three years after President Emmanuel Macron, who had made it one of his key campaign promises, first opened the question to national debate.The vote ended an unusual parliamentary stalemate between the National Assembly and the Senate. Members of the National Assembly passed the bill three times over the course of 14 months — most recently on June 30 by a vote of 295 to 232 — and senators rejected it just as many times. On July 7, the Senate passed, by a narrow majority of 169 to 164, with 11 abstentions, a preliminary motion to outright reject the bill rather than debate it, and this motion itself called on the government to end the legislative process. Rather than heeding this call, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu invoked Article 45 of the Constitution, which allows the government to give the National Assembly the final say when repeated readings fail to produce an agreement between the two chambers. He then referred the bill back to the National Assembly for a fourth and final vote instead of a fourth reading in the Senate.The July 15 vote, however, did not close the matter. On July 14, Lecornu announced he would refer part of the text to the Constitutional Council, a step Senate President Gérard Larcher had also urged, citing in particular how the billʼs conscience clause would interact with health and social care facilities built around end-of-life accompaniment that exclude assisted dying. The council must rule within a month, or eight days if the government asks for an expedited review, meaning the law cannot be promulgated until that review is complete even though the Assembly has now adopted it.The end-of-life law covers both euthanasia, administered by a doctor or nurse, and assisted suicide, in which the patient self-administers a lethal substance, under five cumulative conditions: A person must be an adult, a stable resident of France, diagnosed with a serious and incurable condition, in an advanced or terminal phase of that condition, and suffering in a way current treatment cannot relieve, while remaining able to express a free and informed decision. Self-administration is supposed to be the default rule, with the law providing for intervention by a healthcare professional only when the patient is physically unable to act.A supporting measure aimed at expanding access to palliative care was adopted with much broader support, passing its first reading in the Senate by a vote of 307 to 17. To date, more than 20% of French departments still lack a palliative care unit, according to figures cited repeatedly by the Bishops’ Conference of France during the debate.The push to legalize assisted dying traces back to September 2022, when the National Consultative Ethics Committee reversed its earlier opposition to assisted dying and endorsed an “ethical” application of the practice. A citizens’ panel Macron had convened spent the following winter weighing the question and backed legalization.The French president unveiled the outline of a bill in March 2024, but the initiative stalled when he dissolved the Assembly in June the same year. Deputy Olivier Falorni, who had filed an earlier and unsuccessful end-of-life bill, revived it in 2025.Critics argue the newly adopted framework is among the most permissive of its kind in the world. Grégor Puppinck, a Catholic lawyer and director general of the European Centre for Law and Justice, has published a point-by-point analysis contending that the entire process rests on the judgment of a single physician, who may meet the patient for the first time on the day of the request and need not be the one already treating them.The two additional professionals that physician must consult are chosen by the same person, are not required to examine the patient in person, and may be consulted by videoconference. Puppinck noted the statute sets no minimum interval between the decision and the act itself beyond a two-day reflection window, relatives have no guaranteed right to be informed beforehand, and they cannot challenge the outcome in court. Doctors who object in conscience must still refer patients to a colleague willing to proceed, and private and religious institutions, including nursing homes, must accommodate mobile euthanasia teams under threat of administrative penalties. Oversight, in Puppinck’s account, comes only after death, based on a report filed by the same clinician who carried it out.The founders of the ethics collective Democracy, Ethics, and Solidarity, Laurent Frémont and Emmanuel Hirsch, wrote in Le Journal du Dimanche that the law’s eligibility criteria — primarily a “serious and incurable condition” causing “unbearable suffering,” are defined vaguely enough that a strict medical interpretation could make more than 1 million people eligible, including patients with chronic illnesses, psychiatric disorders, or advanced age, without requiring a prior written request, a peer review by medical colleagues, or a psychiatric evaluation.A 2025 study by the Fondation pour l’innovation politique estimated the measure could save the state around 1.4 billion euros (.6 billion) a year in health, eldercare, and pension spending, a projection critics have cited as evidence of the pressures vulnerable and elderly patients could face once the law takes effect.The French bishops’ conference called the text a threat to “the most fragile” among French citizens in a statement issued in May 2025 ahead of the Assembly’s first vote on the bill. The archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich, has repeatedly urged lawmakers to reconsider their position, asserting that true solidarity is built through caring for others rather than through death. “More than assistance in dying, our society needs assistance in living,” he has repeatedly stated.In a video appeal to lawmakers released before the vote, Archbishop Vincent Jordy of Tours invoked François Rabelais’ centuries-old warning that “science without conscience is but the ruin of the soul.” What is underway, he said, is “an anthropological shift,” a new way of viewing life and its end that will gradually reshape the country, touching caregivers, families, people with disabilities, and the relationship between generations. He pointed to the Netherlands, where regulators had layered on safeguards for two decades and where health officials confirmed in June that a child under 12 had been euthanized for the first time, under a 2024 expansion of the law to children between the ages of 1 and 12. Making a law, Jordy said, is also opening doors toward things “one had perhaps not imagined” when it was written.
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France legalizes euthanasia after forceful push through Parliament #Catholic The French National Assembly gave final approval on July 15 to a bill legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide, making France one of the few European countries to legalize the practice along with Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Spain. The 291-241 vote came three years after President Emmanuel Macron, who had made it one of his key campaign promises, first opened the question to national debate.The vote ended an unusual parliamentary stalemate between the National Assembly and the Senate. Members of the National Assembly passed the bill three times over the course of 14 months — most recently on June 30 by a vote of 295 to 232 — and senators rejected it just as many times. On July 7, the Senate passed, by a narrow majority of 169 to 164, with 11 abstentions, a preliminary motion to outright reject the bill rather than debate it, and this motion itself called on the government to end the legislative process. Rather than heeding this call, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu invoked Article 45 of the Constitution, which allows the government to give the National Assembly the final say when repeated readings fail to produce an agreement between the two chambers. He then referred the bill back to the National Assembly for a fourth and final vote instead of a fourth reading in the Senate.The July 15 vote, however, did not close the matter. On July 14, Lecornu announced he would refer part of the text to the Constitutional Council, a step Senate President Gérard Larcher had also urged, citing in particular how the billʼs conscience clause would interact with health and social care facilities built around end-of-life accompaniment that exclude assisted dying. The council must rule within a month, or eight days if the government asks for an expedited review, meaning the law cannot be promulgated until that review is complete even though the Assembly has now adopted it.The end-of-life law covers both euthanasia, administered by a doctor or nurse, and assisted suicide, in which the patient self-administers a lethal substance, under five cumulative conditions: A person must be an adult, a stable resident of France, diagnosed with a serious and incurable condition, in an advanced or terminal phase of that condition, and suffering in a way current treatment cannot relieve, while remaining able to express a free and informed decision. Self-administration is supposed to be the default rule, with the law providing for intervention by a healthcare professional only when the patient is physically unable to act.A supporting measure aimed at expanding access to palliative care was adopted with much broader support, passing its first reading in the Senate by a vote of 307 to 17. To date, more than 20% of French departments still lack a palliative care unit, according to figures cited repeatedly by the Bishops’ Conference of France during the debate.The push to legalize assisted dying traces back to September 2022, when the National Consultative Ethics Committee reversed its earlier opposition to assisted dying and endorsed an “ethical” application of the practice. A citizens’ panel Macron had convened spent the following winter weighing the question and backed legalization.The French president unveiled the outline of a bill in March 2024, but the initiative stalled when he dissolved the Assembly in June the same year. Deputy Olivier Falorni, who had filed an earlier and unsuccessful end-of-life bill, revived it in 2025.Critics argue the newly adopted framework is among the most permissive of its kind in the world. Grégor Puppinck, a Catholic lawyer and director general of the European Centre for Law and Justice, has published a point-by-point analysis contending that the entire process rests on the judgment of a single physician, who may meet the patient for the first time on the day of the request and need not be the one already treating them.The two additional professionals that physician must consult are chosen by the same person, are not required to examine the patient in person, and may be consulted by videoconference. Puppinck noted the statute sets no minimum interval between the decision and the act itself beyond a two-day reflection window, relatives have no guaranteed right to be informed beforehand, and they cannot challenge the outcome in court. Doctors who object in conscience must still refer patients to a colleague willing to proceed, and private and religious institutions, including nursing homes, must accommodate mobile euthanasia teams under threat of administrative penalties. Oversight, in Puppinck’s account, comes only after death, based on a report filed by the same clinician who carried it out.The founders of the ethics collective Democracy, Ethics, and Solidarity, Laurent Frémont and Emmanuel Hirsch, wrote in Le Journal du Dimanche that the law’s eligibility criteria — primarily a “serious and incurable condition” causing “unbearable suffering,” are defined vaguely enough that a strict medical interpretation could make more than 1 million people eligible, including patients with chronic illnesses, psychiatric disorders, or advanced age, without requiring a prior written request, a peer review by medical colleagues, or a psychiatric evaluation.A 2025 study by the Fondation pour l’innovation politique estimated the measure could save the state around 1.4 billion euros ($1.6 billion) a year in health, eldercare, and pension spending, a projection critics have cited as evidence of the pressures vulnerable and elderly patients could face once the law takes effect.The French bishops’ conference called the text a threat to “the most fragile” among French citizens in a statement issued in May 2025 ahead of the Assembly’s first vote on the bill. The archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich, has repeatedly urged lawmakers to reconsider their position, asserting that true solidarity is built through caring for others rather than through death. “More than assistance in dying, our society needs assistance in living,” he has repeatedly stated.In a video appeal to lawmakers released before the vote, Archbishop Vincent Jordy of Tours invoked François Rabelais’ centuries-old warning that “science without conscience is but the ruin of the soul.” What is underway, he said, is “an anthropological shift,” a new way of viewing life and its end that will gradually reshape the country, touching caregivers, families, people with disabilities, and the relationship between generations. He pointed to the Netherlands, where regulators had layered on safeguards for two decades and where health officials confirmed in June that a child under 12 had been euthanized for the first time, under a 2024 expansion of the law to children between the ages of 1 and 12. Making a law, Jordy said, is also opening doors toward things “one had perhaps not imagined” when it was written.

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The vote, ending an unusual parliamentary stalemate between the National Assembly and the Senate, came three years after President Emmanuel Macron first opened the question to national debate.

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Five years of euthanasia in Spain: The toll and path forward to overturn #Catholic It hasbeen five years since the Euthanasia Law came into effect in Spain — a law that, since its approval, has claimed the lives of 1,668 people, according to official data published by the Spanish Ministry of Health.Since its inception, the number of euthanasia procedures carried out in the country has risen steadily; from 75 in the second half of 2021 to 288 in 2022, followed by 334 in 2023, some 426 in 2024 and 565 in 2025.The Madrid-based Professionals for Ethics Association has issued a report that points out that the progression of euthanasia over the past five years shows that “once approved, euthanasia becomes a slippery slope” with destructive effects.In addition to accelerated year-to-year growth in the number of euthanasia cases, the ethics professionals cite the progressive expansion of the grounds for the procedure under the catch-all category of “severe suffering.”Euthanasia procedures have been streamlined “even at the cost of reducing or eliminating safeguards,” according to the report.Euthanasia is being promoted “as an altruistic choice, based on arguments regarding organ donation and bequests to pro-euthanasia associations.”The report denounces the “imposition of the so-called ‘right to die’ and personal autonomy over good medical practice.”The practice of euthanasia results in the “abandonment of clinical effort” in situations where it appears to be an “easier and less costly” option. The report also underscores that euthanasia “harms the relationship of trust” between patient and physician, as well as between the patient and their family members.The "normalization of euthanasia" in society and among healthcare professionals has led to the "loss of the meaning of vulnerable life, of aging, and of the value of caring for and accompanying” such patients, the report finds.Other destructive effects include “social pressure on dependent individuals based on ‘quality of life’ criteria and the perception of being a burden to others” and, finally, the fostering of individualism and “society’s indifference toward suffering.”RecommendationsBeyond pointing out dangers and contradictions inherent in the advance of euthanasia in Spain, the Professionals for Ethics Association proposes five measures “to reverse the slippery slope of euthanasia upon which we have already embarked.” The first recommended measure is to develop “the plan, organization, and resources necessary to provide nationwide palliative care coverage," which must include "home-based teams and specialized pediatric units."The ethics professionals also recommend boosting support “for vulnerable individuals and their families,” specifically those facing dependency, mental illness, and unwanted loneliness. This requires both the allocation of resources to address these challenges and facilitating “family support through programs that balance work and family life in order to provide care” for the patient.A third recommendation is to monitor official information regarding the euthanasia procedures performed in order to “ensure rigor in the processes for requesting and approving euthanasia,” as well as preventing lax interpretations of the law that make “euthanasia the easiest, most accessible, and quickest ‘solution’.”Fourth, the association holds that “it is vital to preserve the mission and objectives of healthcare aimed at preventing, curing, and caring for health as well as professional ethics and practice.”In this regard, the group emphasizes that “euthanasia runs counter to the essence of medicine, caring for human life, and should never be considered a medical act.” Thus, the association also advocates the right of healthcare workers to conscientiously object to participating in euthanasia procedures.Finally, the association calls for halting the promotion of euthanasia, as its rise “is neither a social good nor a sign of progress in human rights, nor is it even a neutral matter.”“The fact that an increasing number of people in Spain desire a lethal injection should be a cause for concern, not celebration,” the group emphasizes; and therefore advocates for “a euthanasia prevention plan” similar to those for suicide and, ultimately, the repeal of the euthanasia law and the enactment of legislation “that facilitates the care of human life until the very end.”This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.
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Five years of euthanasia in Spain: The toll and path forward to overturn #Catholic It hasbeen five years since the Euthanasia Law came into effect in Spain — a law that, since its approval, has claimed the lives of 1,668 people, according to official data published by the Spanish Ministry of Health.Since its inception, the number of euthanasia procedures carried out in the country has risen steadily; from 75 in the second half of 2021 to 288 in 2022, followed by 334 in 2023, some 426 in 2024 and 565 in 2025.The Madrid-based Professionals for Ethics Association has issued a report that points out that the progression of euthanasia over the past five years shows that “once approved, euthanasia becomes a slippery slope” with destructive effects.In addition to accelerated year-to-year growth in the number of euthanasia cases, the ethics professionals cite the progressive expansion of the grounds for the procedure under the catch-all category of “severe suffering.”Euthanasia procedures have been streamlined “even at the cost of reducing or eliminating safeguards,” according to the report.Euthanasia is being promoted “as an altruistic choice, based on arguments regarding organ donation and bequests to pro-euthanasia associations.”The report denounces the “imposition of the so-called ‘right to die’ and personal autonomy over good medical practice.”The practice of euthanasia results in the “abandonment of clinical effort” in situations where it appears to be an “easier and less costly” option. The report also underscores that euthanasia “harms the relationship of trust” between patient and physician, as well as between the patient and their family members.The "normalization of euthanasia" in society and among healthcare professionals has led to the "loss of the meaning of vulnerable life, of aging, and of the value of caring for and accompanying” such patients, the report finds.Other destructive effects include “social pressure on dependent individuals based on ‘quality of life’ criteria and the perception of being a burden to others” and, finally, the fostering of individualism and “society’s indifference toward suffering.”RecommendationsBeyond pointing out dangers and contradictions inherent in the advance of euthanasia in Spain, the Professionals for Ethics Association proposes five measures “to reverse the slippery slope of euthanasia upon which we have already embarked.” The first recommended measure is to develop “the plan, organization, and resources necessary to provide nationwide palliative care coverage," which must include "home-based teams and specialized pediatric units."The ethics professionals also recommend boosting support “for vulnerable individuals and their families,” specifically those facing dependency, mental illness, and unwanted loneliness. This requires both the allocation of resources to address these challenges and facilitating “family support through programs that balance work and family life in order to provide care” for the patient.A third recommendation is to monitor official information regarding the euthanasia procedures performed in order to “ensure rigor in the processes for requesting and approving euthanasia,” as well as preventing lax interpretations of the law that make “euthanasia the easiest, most accessible, and quickest ‘solution’.”Fourth, the association holds that “it is vital to preserve the mission and objectives of healthcare aimed at preventing, curing, and caring for health as well as professional ethics and practice.”In this regard, the group emphasizes that “euthanasia runs counter to the essence of medicine, caring for human life, and should never be considered a medical act.” Thus, the association also advocates the right of healthcare workers to conscientiously object to participating in euthanasia procedures.Finally, the association calls for halting the promotion of euthanasia, as its rise “is neither a social good nor a sign of progress in human rights, nor is it even a neutral matter.”“The fact that an increasing number of people in Spain desire a lethal injection should be a cause for concern, not celebration,” the group emphasizes; and therefore advocates for “a euthanasia prevention plan” similar to those for suicide and, ultimately, the repeal of the euthanasia law and the enactment of legislation “that facilitates the care of human life until the very end.”This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

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Euthanasia is on the rise in Spain, and as its destructive effects become more apparent, ethics professionals are offering recommendations to prevent and ultimately eliminate the practice.

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