_WORLD WATCH______________________________
________________France_______________
Legal euthanasia proposed
Support from polls
France’s health minister has proposed the legalization of euthanasia in that country, pointing to the official legalization of the practice in the Netherlands and indications of support for the measure in opinion polls in France.
Health Minister Bernard Kouchner said that he would visit the Netherlands to gather information on how advocates of euthanasia were able to mobilize political support for the idea. “There’s an unquestionable change in French public opinion. We have to adapt and try to behave in a more humane manner in cases of such difficulty,” he told the daily Le Monde. “It’s time to debate the issue openly, without arrogance, preconceived ideas, or ideological rhetoric,” he said.
A survey published in April indicated that 38 percent of the French people were in favor of legal euthanasia in all cases of when an individual was suffering extreme pain or terminal disease, and that another 50 percent would allow doctors to bring life to an end in certain more carefully defined cases. Only 10 percent were opposed to the practice, while two percent declined to advance a view, according to the Ifop agency, which questioned 950 adults on April 12 and 13.
Kouchner called the poll results “a fabulous breakthrough” for France. He rejected calls for increased emphasis on palliative care instead of euthanasia. “Palliative care does not solve all the problems,” he said. “We will always face cases of another dimension, requests to end a life, for a gentle way out: for assisted suicide.”
Extradition plea
Death penalty is crucial issue
The United States has formally requested extradition of
James Kopp, who is wanted for the 1998 murder of a New York abortionist. But it is not clear that French courts will release the American man to the custody of the US courts.
Kopp was apprehended in the northwestern French city of Dinan on March 29. He had been on the run for more than two years, and on the FBI’s Most Wanted List since June 1999.
Soon after Dr. Barnett Slepian was killed by a sniper as he stood in his kitchen, federal investigators said that they wanted to question Kopp about the killing. Six months later—after having announced that they had found a strand of hair matching Kopp’s DNA profile in the wooded area from which the fatal shot was fired, federal officials formally charged the Vermont native with the murder. Police say that they also suspect Kopp may be involved with the shootings of four other abortionists in Canada and the northern United States.
After receiving the American extradition request in early May, a court in Rennes has three months to decide whether Kopp will be extradited. US officials declined to speculate on whether the request would be granted. “I can tell you that the papers were filed with the Ministry of Justice” in France, federal prosecutor Denise O’Donnell said from her office in Buffalo.
French officials have given earlier indications they will not extradite Kopp if he risks facing the death penalty. The French government opposes the death penalty, and French courts routinely reject extradition requests from countries that might execute the individuals involved in the cases. French officials might request some guarantee that US prosecutors would not seek the death penalty in Kopp’s case. But no such guarantee was provided along with the initial extradition request. “The death penalty issue has not yet arisen in this case,” O’Donnell said. “If the issue is raised, it would be raised by the French government in response to the request for extradition.”