Quel cheminement pour un soignant dans le débat sur l’aide active à mourir ? Plaidoyer contre les certitudes

The French debate on end of life and aid in dying, once at the heart of a bill whose examination has now been halted, is giving rise to confrontations combining legal, ethical, deontological, and medical practice arguments. But these arguments are often reduced to binary oppositions in which finding Camus’ beloved “middle path” remains perilous.This path is possible, but it requires a combination of nuance and conviction. Such a path, embodied in an essay that takes stock of the forces at play and the arguments for and against a change that is not only legislative but also anthropological, is open to criticism and dogmatism. This “feedback” identifies the reasons for this, and the role of emotions, visceral reactions, and ancestral postures on the part of caregivers, in competition with the Reason that should drive them in the first place. Nor are political issues absent from the tensions observed. On both sides, when certainties compete with convictions, we find the temptation to essentialize the “Other” and the abuse of definite articles that reduce them to simplistic entities. But this journey also brings us into contact with people who are prone to doubt and a “guilty conscience,” without which there can be no ethical reflection. All in all, a profound societal change is taking place, whether we lament it or welcome it, emphasizing free will and the principle of autonomy. For caregivers, particularly in palliative care, the paradigm shift is enormous: moving from a medico-centric posture to a citizen-centric approach, and abstracting themselves, as it were, from the position of sole “knower” of things about death or the psyche.