Demonstrators take part in the Marche pour la Vie (‘March for Life’) to protest against France’s bill for the creation of a right to assisted suicide in Paris on January 18, 2026.
MARTIN LELIEVRE / AFP
The Senate debates trying to ban assisted suicide unfortunately led to nothing.
French parliamentarians continue to battle over the bill to legalise euthanasia. Although, following an unexpected rebellion, senators managed to amend the bill in a way that was openly pro-life, the final vote in the upper house overturned all their work by rejecting all the amendments proposed by the Right. As a result, it is the initial deadly law that is likely to be adopted in the final reading.
There have been a series of twists and turns in the bill on euthanasia and assisted suicide—proof, if any were needed, of the extreme sensitivity of the subject and the lack of a clear consensus on the central issue of life and death, both in French public opinion and among parliamentarians.
A few days ago, senators from the right and centre managed, thanks to an extraordinary night-time mobilisation, to completely rewrite the bill so as to prohibit the use of lethal measures against patients at the end of their lives. Through various amendments, they succeeded in imposing a different vision of patient care, prioritising the relief of suffering and preserving the conscience of caregivers.
The text, which was initially intended to establish a “right to assisted dying,” had become one of an “enforceable right to the best possible relief without any voluntary intervention intended to cause death or assist in dying.”
Unfortunately, this victory was short-lived. In a final vote, left-wing senators fought back and mobilised to reject the amended bill on the grounds that it was now “emptied of its substance,” “disjointed” and “no longer made any sense.” Left-wing senator Bernard Fialaire justified his vote by expressing concern that the Senate would appear to be a “reactionary” assembly. The amended bill was then rejected by 181 votes to 122.
The consequences of this final reversal are serious. At the end of the parliamentary process, the version approved by the National Assembly at first reading will once again become the reference—the most permissive and dangerous version.
Debates will resume in the lower house on February 4th. The outcome is now virtually certain, as the National Assembly is generally in favour of a maximalist option and is not bound by the discussions that took place in the Senate.
Under these circumstances, the Senate’s adoption this week of the twin bill on palliative care and support for the sick went virtually unnoticed, as pro-life healthcare workers and doctors’ organisations had feared.
This is therefore not a time for optimism. The Jérôme Lejeune Foundation said following the Senate vote that while the bill is by no means a “democratic foregone conclusion,” the threat remains significant, given that it is the most permissive text in the world that is returning to the forefront of the Assembly. Nevertheless, opponents of euthanasia refuse to admit defeat and intend to keep up the pressure by writing to MPs, in the hope that some of them will have a change of heart during the final vote scheduled for February 16th.
Hélène de Lauzun is the Paris correspondent for The European Conservative. She studied at the École Normale Supérieure de Paris. She taught French literature and civilization at Harvard and received a Ph.D. in History from the Sorbonne. She is the author of Histoire de l’Autriche (Perrin, 2021).
