Assisted dying law in France opens a new ethical era, advocate says
France’s long-anticipated assisted dying legislation has cleared a major parliamentary hurdle, but for those who have spent years campaigning for the right to die with dignity, the vote is not a finish line. It’s a starting gun.
Anne Reynaud, a board member of the Association for the Right to Die with Dignity, spoke to François Picard on Spotlight this week, offering a frank assessment of what the new law gets right, what it falls short on, and why the debate is far from over.
A law more restrictive than citizens wanted
France’s Citizens’ Convention on end-of-life care, which gathered 184 randomly selected citizens over nine months, recommended a broader framework than what parliament ultimately passed. The gap between that recommendation and the final text is something Reynaud doesn’t shy away from. “The law represents real progress,” she said, “but it is more restrictive than what the Citizens’ Convention asked for.”
Access to assisted dying under the new legislation will be limited to adults with serious and incurable conditions causing constant physical or psychological suffering. Patients must be capable of expressing their own consent at the time of the request. That rules out a significant number of people — those with advanced dementia, for instance — who might have expressed a clear wish to die with assistance before losing that capacity.
Palliative care can’t be an afterthought
Reynaud was unambiguous on one point: you cannot have a good assisted dying law without good palliative care. France currently has a significant deficit there. According to figures cited in parliamentary debates, around 50 percent of French people who need palliative care don’t actually receive it. That’s not a footnote. That’s a crisis running parallel to this legislation.
She argues that the two issues are inseparable. Assisted dying is not a substitute for palliative care — it’s a complement to it. And without serious investment in end-of-life support structures, a new law risks meaning very little in practice for most patients.
This is the part that tends to get lost in the headlines.
Personal stakes, professional conviction
Reynaud speaks from more than an ideological position. She has watched people close to her navigate end-of-life suffering without adequate options, and that experience shapes her advocacy in ways that policy documents alone can’t capture. For her, this isn’t abstract. It’s deeply human.
Still, she’s careful not to overstate the law’s immediate reach. Implementation will be complex, the medical profession remains divided, and the conditions for eligibility will be subject to ongoing legal interpretation. One senior health official acknowledged this week that “the real work begins now, in the hospitals and the hospices.”
What comes next
France joins a small but growing number of European countries grappling seriously with these questions. Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland each offer different models, and French lawmakers watched all of them closely.
But France’s path will be its own. The law passed. The conversation hasn’t ended — it’s changed shape. And how the country builds the palliative care infrastructure to sit alongside this legislation will define whether the reform delivers on its promise or remains a right that exists only on paper.
