‘Le tout dernier été’ by Anne Bert

Following her diagnosis of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), writer Anne Bert made the decision that she would not live with the disease until its natural conclusion. Bert sees the right to choose her own time of death as a fundamental human right and Le tout dernier été is her story of invoking that right. The text recounts the suffering associated with life-limiting illness, but also acknowledges the moments of relational intimacy that come along the way. Bert is critical of the lack of assisted dying provision in France, which offers only the possibility of terminal sedation (Loi Claeys-Leonetti, 2016), and highlights the additional suffering caused by the journey to Belgium in search of an assisted death.

Anne Bert’s travel to Belgium was widely debated in French media and led to deputy Jean-Louis Touraine submitting a proposal for a new law on euthanasia (Assemblée nationale, Proposition de loi no 185, 2017), colloquially referred to as Anne Bert’s law. Bert herself even helped draft another bill, discussed by the Assemblée nationale in 2021; however, the way that bill positions Bert’s own experience as evidence was openly challenged by the author Michel Houellebecq. Since Bert’s death, her daughter, journalist Roxane Guichard, has taken up her mother’s fight, documenting the trauma this form of suicide tourism caused the wider family. She was one of the signatories of the Manifeste des 109, urging French president Emmanuel Macron to legalise assisted dying in France in the aftermath of the Convention citoyenne sur la fin de vie.