Assisted dying: France's Constitutional Council upholds the law

On 14 August 2026, the Constitutional Council upheld in its entirety the law on "assisted dying," adopted on 15 July by the National Assembly, attaching to it three interpretative reservations. The text opens in France the way to assisted suicide and euthanasia. The Bishop of Nanterre, Bishop Matthieu Rougé, expressed his sorrow and his resolve to continue the fight for the accompaniment of vulnerable persons.

What tradition teaches

God's law here knows no exception. The fifth commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," forbids the taking of human life, another's as one's own. God alone is master of life and of death; man has received his own life only in trust and has no free disposal of it. The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that this precept forbids homicide as well as suicide, and that it binds also those who, without striking with their own hand, lend it counsel, aid, or consent. To put a sick person to death, or to help him do so, is not care: it is homicide, whatever gentleness be lent to it.

The measure

A law that authorizes killing adds nothing to the good of the dying; it withdraws from his life the protection society owes him. "Assisted dying prevails over aid to living," said Bishop Rougé. And again: "The very fact of being able to strike at another's life strikes at the foundation of life in society." None of the three reservations reaches this core: the power to give death remains written into the law. "The sorrow of the law that was voted remains," concluded the Bishop of Nanterre.

What is noted, what is contested

In the decision, Bishop Rougé notes a few safeguards: a heightened vigilance regarding protected minors, the recognition of conscientious objection for pharmacists, the legitimation of the ethical charter of establishments that refuse to practise euthanasia. The Council indeed admits that a private health establishment may refuse to have the procedure carried out on its premises when it is manifestly contrary to its statutory missions or its charter, on condition that other establishments meet local needs, in keeping with the provisions already in force for abortion.

Others judge the decision more severely. The Jérôme-Lejeune Foundation calls it "scandalously minimalist": no provision was struck down, and no particular protection was granted to persons with intellectual disability. Its president, Jean-Marie Le Méné, denounces a "biased and partial" decision, four members of the Council having, in his view, publicly taken sides for the legalization of euthanasia. On the substance the two voices meet: the law was not stopped.

What the faithful must hold

No civil law can render licit what the divine law forbids. A text that permits giving death obliges no one to give it or to ask for it; it does not abolish the fifth commandment, it sets itself across it. The Christian's duty remains whole: to accompany the dying, to relieve his pain, to watch beside him until the term that God alone appoints, without ever hastening that hour. The conscientious objection recognized for the pharmacist, the physician, and the establishment is not a favour: it is the right not to cooperate in a homicide, and this right binds us to use it.

Sources. Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), explanation of the fifth commandment, "Thou shalt not kill." Exodus xx, 13 (Vulgate). Saint Augustine, The City of God, Book I, on the prohibition laid upon man against taking his own life.