ABSTRACT
In France, bioethics has become one of society’s major challenges. Hundreds of books and articles on the subject provide ample evidence of this situation, as do the many conferences and debates organized every year.1 A forthcoming revision of an innovative piece of legislation passed by the French Parliament in 1994, known as the “bioethics laws”, is presently at the center of public debate and has intensified discussion. Discussion was already heated because of several events which mobilized public opinion: a nurse was brought to trial for committing euthanasia on some of her elderly patients; the National Consultative Ethics Committee for Health and Life Sciences (CCNE) published a report on euthanasia; the law on elective abortion was revised; and a judgment was pronounced by the Cour de Cassation (supreme court in the civil and criminal judicial system), the so-called “Arrêt Perruche” (2000).
