France legalizes euthanasia after forceful push through Parliament

The French National Assembly gave final approval on July 15 to a bill legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide , making France one of the few European countries to legalize the practice along with Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Spain.

The 291-241 vote came three years after President Emmanuel Macron, who had made it one of his key campaign promises, first opened the question to national debate.

The vote ended an unusual parliamentary stalemate between the National Assembly and the Senate. Members of the National Assembly passed the bill three times over the course of 14 months — most recently on June 30 by a vote of 295 to 232 — and senators rejected it just as many times.

On July 7, the Senate passed, by a narrow majority of 169 to 164, with 11 abstentions, a preliminary motion to outright reject the bill rather than debate it, and this motion itself called on the government to end the legislative process. Rather than heeding this call, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu invoked Article 45 of the Constitution, which allows the government to give the National Assembly the final say when repeated readings fail to produce an agreement between the two chambers. He…