He was one of the 199 deputies who voted against the bill creating a right to death, widely adopted on Tuesday, May 27 to First Reading in the National Assembly. The deputy of the Republican right of Hauts-de-Seine, Philippe Juvvin, explains on Wednesday, May 28 in BFMTV as “for a society that helps people to live, not die.”
The head of the Emergency Department of the Hospital of the Georges-Pompidou Hospital in Paris Teme, as he had explained within the Hemicycle, that people who do not have the means to pay attention or medical assistance choose help by default.
“Today, in France, one in two French who need palliative care does not have access to it. As long as they are not resolved, people are not free,” he said. “Basically, it will be: ‘I choose help to die because I’m not well treated.'”
“Obviously there are not enough safeguards”
Philippe Juvvin is alarmed by the “criteria” defined by the text. He must be at least 18 years old, have French nationality or reside in a stable and regular way in France, to become “a serious and incurable affection” that “commits the vital prognosis, in an advanced way” or “terminal”, presents a “constant physical or psychological suffering linked to this condition” and “to manifest its will freely and enlightened.”
“The criteria chosen, it should be understood that these are not criteria for the people who are at the end of their lives. This opens to people who have diseases that can live years,” said the emergency doctor. He fears that people choose help to die “because they are exhausted by life”, because their “family cannot endure it anymore.” The deputy also criticizes the reflection period of 48 hours provided for in the text.
The elected representative of Hauts-of-Seine wishes “before offering help to die” that France regulates the “suicide prevention, the mental health that does not work today.”
To explain your vote, Philippe Juvvin also points out the lack of “safeguards.” “Obviously there are not enough safeguards and the safeguards that will evolve on time,” said, for example, foreign countries where “the initial criteria have all opened.” “There is always someone who is not covered by law, so we make a law to extend,” he says.
An “Exception of Euthanasia”
Acting that there is a “sum of different events and situations”, the doctor explains “that he does not oppose an evolution of Leonetti’s law” (which allows a deep sedation for people whose vital prognosis is committed, editor’s note) to an “exception of euthanasia.”
“When at the end of the ends, we are not successful (…) in cases where Leonetti’s law does not apply, I would not have opposed an exception of euthanasia,” he said.
The deputy believes that the “compensation work carried out in the National Assembly during the debates” will take advantage of the Senate “to look at the fund.” The bill must now be adopted by the upper chamber, dominated by the right and the center and less acquired to this reform, before “a return to the National Assembly in early 2026”, according to the Minister of Health, Catherine Vautrin. “We know, it’s a long trip to drive,” he said after the vote of the deputies.
Source: BFM TV
