Vincent Lambert case
French right to die case
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Vincent Lambert (20 September 1976 in Châteauroux – 11 July 2019 in Reims) was a French man who in 2008 fell into a persistent vegetative state after sustaining critical injuries in a road accident. He had been working as a psychiatric nurse since 2000, and had been married since 2007 to his wife Rachel, then a nursing student.[1]
Lambert's widow was willing to let him die according to the wishes he reportedly expressed prior to the accident but had never formalized into a written living will. His mother, Viviane Lambert, was determined to keep him alive, according to her strong Traditionalist Catholic convictions.[2] After an eleven year legal battle between the two sides of his family, the courts allowed him to die through starvation in July 2019.[3]
Similarly to the Terri Schiavo case in the United States, his case spurred highly publicized activism from the anti-abortion movement, the right-to-die movement, and disability rights groups, in France and French-speaking countries.[4]
