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She is about to turn 80 years old, she has been, along with Brigitte Bardot or Jane Birkin, one of the great icons of the 60s in France and one of the most famous singers inside and outside the country. He has been living "a nightmare" for several years from which, he says, he wants to get out "as soon as possible and quickly". Françoise Hardy (Paris, 1944), who suffers from pharyngeal cancer, has asked for euthanasia, which is not currently regulated in France.

On Sunday, he addressed French President Emmanuel Macron in a press platform in which he called for the regularization of aid to die with dignity. The letter was published in the newspaper La Tribune du Dimanche: "Dear Emmanuel Macron," begins the letter in which the singer gives as an example the situation experienced by her mother, who suffered from Charcot's disease, and to which the doctors, with the complicity of Hardy herself, facilitated the final stretch of a then insufferable life.

"She confided in her doctor her aspiration not to suffer from this horrible disease. He told her not to worry and that when she wanted, he would do whatever it took," she recounts in detail. "Thanks to two brave and understanding doctors, my mother did not have to go all the way to the end of an incurable and unbearable disease," the letter to the president continues.

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"You know that there is a large majority of people who want the legalization of euthanasia," he asks. He asks the highest authority of the Republic, Macron, to "have empathy" and to allow "the French who are very sick and who no longer have hope to stop their suffering when they know that there is no longer any possible relief".

This is not the first time that the French singer has spoken out about this debate. In 2021, he already called for euthanasia to be legalized to end "the hell" he had been living for years. Pharyngeal cancer was diagnosed in 2018. Even then, in another interview, he told of the problems he had as a result of radiotherapy and breathing difficulties.

Just this week, he once again detailed the agony of his day-to-day life in an interview with Paris Match magazine. "Illness destroys the mind. Age helps, but radiotherapy impacts the head, as is the case with the 55 radiotherapies I've had. We gradually lose our memory and the lack of balance severely reduces the chances of moving," he explains in this publication.

Hardy has explicitly expressed that he wants his life to end "without having to go through great tests, such as the inability to breathe." Actor Alain Delon, who is 86 years old and whose health has deteriorated greatly, also addressed this issue a year ago. The legendary performer lives in Switzerland, where euthanasia is legal and even the press published his imminent death. "I'm not afraid to die, I'm afraid to suffer," he said at the time.

France plans to consider an end-of-life law next year, although the debate has been going on for decades. Already in 2021, the Assembly rejected a bill to legalize euthanasia. The text being prepared by the Government now contains several parts: one on palliative care, another on the right of the patient and one more on aid in dying. The minister in charge of territorial organization and health professionals, Agnès Firmin le Bodo, said yesterday that Macron has already begun the debate on this issue and wants this bill to be debated this year, which begins in two weeks.

Françoise Hardy is one of the most iconic figures in French song. She has about thirty albums, she has been a muse and an artist. She posed for designers such as Yves Saint Laurent and Paco Rabanne, and has been photographed by photographers such as William Klein and Richard Avedon. Bob Dylan, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán and Jacques Prévert dedicated poems and verses to him and he has a dozen films to his credit.

After a silence of six years, and after overcoming a very aggressive cancer, the author of Tous les garçons et les filles (which gave its name to her first album) premiered her latest work in 2018. He was 74 years old at the time. It was called Personne d'autre (No One Else). Regarding that moment, her son, Thomas Dutronc, recalled these days: "Her life has become so painful and so sad that we sometimes wonder if it would not have been better to let her go when she came close to death eight years ago."

  • music
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  • Emmanuel Macron
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