As parliamentarians debated last Thursday a bill to legalise euthanasia, French bishops spoke out against the proposal.
A bill to institute a right to “a free and chosen end of life” was debated in the National Assembly, the lower house of France’s parliament, April 8.
“The solution when a person faces suffering is not to kill them, but to ease their pain and to accompany them,” Archbishop Michel Aupetit of Paris told France Inter.
“It is all the more paradoxical that there is this attack on death, on the manner of causing death, at the very moment when death surrounds us everywhere. On the contrary, we should fight for life,” he exclaimed, urging better palliative care.
The bill’s sponsor is Olivier Falorni, a member of the opposition parliamentary group Liberties and Territories.
The government has not taken a position on the bill, though most members of the governing La République En Marche group support legal euthanasia.
