End of life, right to abortion, situation in hospitals… After the appointment of Catherine Vautrin, “incomprehension” and concern among health professionals

The new Minister of Labor and Health, from the conservative right, is far from unanimous among caregivers. Its position on several issues, including end of life, will be carefully scrutinized.

Catherine Vautrin took office on Friday January 12 in the morning, in the large ministry that she will manage with the portfolios of Labor, Health and Solidarity. But the profile of this woman from the conservative right has worried many health professionals since her appointment Thursday evening within the government of Gabriel Attal.

Doctor Olivier Milleron, one of the leaders of the Inter-Hôpitaux collective, who has been warning about the hospital crisis for years, does not beat around the bush. “Catherine Vautrin, it’s the Manif pour tous which enters the Ministry of Health!”, he exclaims. This former member of the UMP, then of the Republicans, demonstrated and voted at the time against Marriage for All. A vote she recently regretted.

His positions on abortion also raise questions. In 2017, when she was a deputy, Catherine Vautrin was part of a list of parliamentarians who asked the Constitutional Council to censor a law protecting access to abortion. A question therefore arises: what about the project to bring abortion into the Constitution, which should be completed in the coming weeks? During the transfer of power on Friday morning, the new minister seemed to give assurances by paying tribute to Simone Veil, saluting this moment “where its founding text must be engraved in the stone of our Constitution”.

Catherine Vautrin will also have to manage the reform of the AME, state medical aid, supported by the right from which she comes. But many caregivers are opposed to this reform.

A “huge task” for the minister

The new minister will have to lead these projects head on, while “the hospital situation only continues to get worse”, deplores Jean-Luc Jouve, pediatric surgeon and member of the Inter-Hôpitaux collective, Friday evening on franceinfo. And the doctor wonders “if the captain who is going to be at the helm of this enormous ship is up to the enormous task that lies ahead.”

The other big question concerns the bill on the end of life, a promise from Emmanuel Macron. The head of state spoke last spring of establishing “a French end-of-life model”. Catherine Vautrin’s predecessor at the Ministry of Health, Agnès Firmin Le Bodo, worked for months on this future bill. She was in favor, like the Citizens’ Convention last winter, of the establishment of active assistance in dying in France, namely introducing assisted suicide and/or euthanasia.

But the president seems to be procrastinating, without knowing what he has in mind or when the bill would be presented. Will there be active assistance in dying? With the profile of the very conservative Catherine Vautrin, nothing is less certain from now on. Some observers even fear that the project will be buried.

“We don’t understand the strategy”

Catherine Vautrin will, however, only be the responsible minister on the subject of health, since she heads this “super-ministry”. “We have difficulty understanding a strategy of putting in place a person who is at a distance from these subjects. We are incomprehensible, we in hospitals, when we see the casting that is offered to us”judge Jean-Luc Jouve.

According to information from franceinfo, Agnès Pannier-Runacher will take the reins of the Ministry of Health. The former Minister of Energy Transition has a more technical profile, less political than Catherine Vautrin, and less marked on the right.