The deputies were divided on one of the main articles of the text, against the incitement to therapeutic abstention. The debates will continue in the Senate at the beginning of April.
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The National Assembly adopted on Wednesday March 20 in new reading the government bill aimed at fighting “against sectarian abuses”. The examination will have been much less agitated than during his first visit to the lower house. The bill, adopted by 104 votes to 65, must return to the Senate on April 3. Deputies and senators failed to agree on a common version in the joint committee at the beginning of March.
On Wednesday, deputies from the presidential camp (Renaissance, MoDem, Horizons) and the socialist, environmentalist and Liot groups (independents) voted in favor. The Insoumis and the National Rally (RN) deputies voted against, while the majority of elected Republicans abstained.
At the heart of the differences, a key article against “gurus 2.0”which creates an offense of provocation to abandon or abstain from treatment, which would be punishable by one year of imprisonment and a fine of 30,000 euros, or even three years of imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euros. when the provocation was followed by effects.
A text which preserves “freedom of expression”, according to its defenders
Is targeted “provocation, by means of pressure or repeated maneuvers” has “abandon or refrain from following therapeutic or prophylactic medical treatment” when this abandonment “is presented as beneficial for health”.
“There are gurus, influencers, so-called caregivers who are criminals because they promote practices that kill”, underlined Secretary of State Sabrina Agresti-Rubache on the government bench. Conversely, the RN deputy Thomas Ménage described the article as“attacking public freedoms and dangerous for freedom of expression and scientific debate”.
Several opposition deputies once again raised the key role of whistleblower Irène Frachon in the Mediator affair, affirming that she could not have played it with this law. The article, rewritten, preserves the “freedom of expression” And “the role of whistleblowers”insisted the Renaissance rapporteur of the text, Brigitte Liso, supported by the socialist deputy Arthur Delaporte, who also assured that “associations for the right to die with dignity are not concerned”. The text also provides for an offense of placement or maintenance in a state of “psychological subjection”.