Line Renaud gave her support to Françoise Hardy during an interview with Darius Rochebin on LCI on Friday December 15. The interpreter of It’s the time for love has been fighting against pharyngeal cancer since 2018, after recovering from cancer of the lymphatic system several years ago. In an interview with Paris Match, the 79-year-old singer looked back on her daily life punctuated by pain that had become nightmarish. She states her desire to “leave to the other dimension as soon, as quickly and as painlessly as possible”.
It is in response to this accumulated suffering that Line Renaud expressed her indignation on LCI. A convinced supporter of the right to euthanasia and godmother of the Association for the Right to Die with Dignity (ADMD), she confided on the air: “I understand [Françoise Hardy], and if I were her, I I would ask to leave as quickly as possible as she asks. It’s impossible to suffer, to be in pain, to take medicine that doesn’t help her, so we have to let her go.” “We have to help him,” she insisted.
Line Renaud then expressed her dissatisfaction with the end-of-life bill studied by the government. The 95-year-old actress finds the process too slow. In September 2021, she went to the National Assembly to urge deputies to vote “as quickly as possible” on a text for an “ultimate and sovereign freedom, that of dying with dignity”. A year later, she called for the legalization of “active assistance in dying” in an article published in the JDD. But this new law has not yet been studied by the deputies: “They should bring it out now […], 74 deputies agreed with this law when I went to talk about it [at the National Assembly] “, she said on LCI. “They all agreed, so why wait? […] Why don’t we pass this law?” she asked herself. “It will come, it will come… but too late for Françoise” she lamented, not without emotion.
Françoise Hardy has been trying to assert her right to die with dignity for months. In an open letter published in La Tribune on December 17, she addressed Emmanuel Macron and drew the president’s attention to the urgency of a situation that concerns many French people: “As you know, a large majority of people wants the legalization of euthanasia. We are all counting on your empathy and hope that you will allow the French people who are very sick and without hope of getting better to stop their suffering when they know that there is no longer any relief possible,” she wrote.
As a reminder, in France, the law does not allow the use of euthanasia and assisted suicide. However, since February 2016, the Claeys-Leonetti law provides for the possibility of implementing “deep and continuous sedation until death for sick people whose vital prognosis is compromised in the short term, with cessation of all treatments”. It is decided by doctors when all the means implemented until then have not produced satisfactory results.
But the law on end-of-life supervision could evolve. Three options remain possible. Assisted suicide, which sees the sick person administering the lethal product, active euthanasia which requires the intervention of a caregiver at the time of administration of the product, and suicide assisted by a third party – a member of staff caregiver or a loved one – if the person at the end of life is not able to carry out the procedure alone.
Originally planned for the end of summer 2023, the law will finally be presented next February. The last word will go to the President of the Republic.
