“One Does Not Care for Life by Giving Death”: French Bishops Oppose Assisted Dying Law

Jan 20, 2026: As the French Senate prepares to examine legislation on end-of-life care, the Permanent Council of the Conference of Bishops of France has issued a statement urging serious reflection on care, solidarity, and human dignity. The bishops set out their position in an opinion piece published on January 14, 2026.

In the coming days, the French Senate will examine a bill establishing a “right to assisted dying.” The bishops said the debate touches society at its most intimate and serious level: how it supports its most vulnerable members until the end of life.

The bishops reaffirmed their deep respect for those facing the end of life, serious or incurable illness, suffering, and the fear of dependence. They recalled the Church’s long history of accompanying the sick and disabled, as well as caregivers, healthcare professionals, and chaplains in hospitals and nursing homes. They said they regularly hear the anguish of people who fear pain, loneliness, or loss of control, whether directly or through families and diocesan communities. These fears, they stressed, are real and call for appropriate human, fraternal, medical, and social responses.

For more than twenty-five years, the statement noted, France has followed a distinctive path by rejecting both unreasonable aggressive treatment and induced death, while affirming the right not to suffer and the duty to accompany life until its end. Successive laws, including the Claeys-Leonetti law and the current draft legislation aimed at ensuring equal access to palliative care, have shaped what the bishops described as a coherent and recognized “French path.” This approach promotes a culture of palliative care, respect for patients’ wishes and advance directives, and the possibility of deep and continuous sedation intended not to cause death but to relieve pain.

The bishops said palliative care remains the only truly effective response to distressing end-of-life situations. They thanked elected officials who support the current bill on equal access to palliative care and cited healthcare professionals who attest that holistic care—addressing physical, psychological, relational, and spiritual dimensions—almost always leads to the disappearance of requests to die among terminally ill patients. They added that behind a request for death, there is often a desire to live. The Church, already present in healthcare settings, said it is ready to strengthen its commitment to developing a culture of palliative care accessible to all.

The bishops then raised a central question: why a new law? If “people die badly in France,” as is sometimes said, they argued, it is not because lethal substances are not permitted, but because existing laws are insufficiently applied and access to palliative care remains highly unequal. Nearly a quarter of palliative care needs, they noted, remain unmet. They questioned how death could be offered as an option when effective access to care, pain relief—given that medical advances allow almost all refractory pain to be overcome—human presence, and support are not guaranteed.

According to the bishops, legalizing euthanasia or assisted suicide would profoundly alter the social contract. Presenting such practices as acts of care, they warned, blurs ethical boundaries. Language, they said, is distorted to numb consciences, insisting that such obfuscation is never neutral and that “one does not care for life by giving death.”

They rejected the instrumentalization of dignity, freedom, and fraternity, reaffirming that human dignity does not depend on health, autonomy, or social usefulness but is inherent until the very end of life. They cautioned against viewing freedom in isolation, noting the influence of suffering, fear, loneliness, and social pressure. To place the burden of choosing death on a sick person, a family, or a medical team trained to heal and not to kill, they said, denies human interdependence. They recalled Paul Ricoeur’s call to “think about the responsibility we have for others, who are entrusted to our care and protection, and not only about the responsibility we have for ourselves.”

Invoking a “law of fraternity” to justify causing death, they added, is a lie. Fraternity, they said, means never abandoning those who suffer, while committing to palliative care, caregiver training, family support, and combating isolation.

The bishops concluded that the vote before lawmakers is a societal choice. Beyond “assisted dying,” they said, it raises fundamental questions about life, suffering, and death. A society, they affirmed, grows not by offering death as a solution, but by protecting life until the very end—“the only one that is truly humane, dignified, and fraternal.”

Courtesy: Eglise Catholique.