the Constitutional Council validates the new offense of “provocation to withhold medical care”

The Constitutional Council validated the most divisive measure in the law against sectarian abuses, Tuesday May 7, namely the creation of a new offense of provocation to withhold medical care. The Sages had been contacted by the RN deputies and the LR senators who saw in this offense a “disproportionate attack on freedom of expression”.

The Constitutional Council judges on the contrary, in its decision, that “the provisions establishing the contested offense are not equivocal and are sufficiently precise to guarantee against the risk of arbitrariness”.

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Faced with “gurus 2.0” and their so-called miracle natural remedies against cancer, the law adopted by Parliament on April 9 creates an offense of provocation to abandon or abstain from treatment, punishable by one year of imprisonment and a fine of 30,000 euros, or even three years in prison and a fine of 45,000 euros when the provocation was followed by effects. Is targeted “provocation, by means of repeated pressure or maneuvers” to “abandon or refrain from following therapeutic or prophylactic medical treatment”when this abandonment “is presented as beneficial for health”while it may have “particularly serious consequences”.