Euthanasia debate woman found dead

PARIS, France (CNN) -- A French woman severely disfigured by facial tumors has been found dead just two days after a court rejected her request for an assisted suicide.

Medical examiners were Thursday looking into the death of 52-year-old Chantal Sebire -- whose case had prompted nominally Roman Catholic France to reexamine its stance on euthanasia -- to determine whether anything illegal had taken place.

It was not immediately clear how Sebire died.

The Dijon prosecutor has also opened an investigation into her death, although it has not yet been determined that an autopsy will take place, according to the prosecutor's office.

Sebire had suffered from esthesioneuroblastoma, a rare and incurable form of cancer for eight years, developing tumors in her nasal passages and sinuses that distorted her face and caused her nose and eyes to bulge.

Sound off: What do you think about euthanasia?

The woman from Dijon, in eastern France, said drugs were ineffective against the excruciating pain caused by the condition and there was no reason doctors should not be permitted to hasten her death.

"It is not only the face. Some of my bones are eaten into. I don't have any more upper and lower jaws," she said in an interview last month, according to an Associated Press translation.

"At the moment, we don't know by what miracle my teeth are still holding. My gums are falling apart. You see the deformation of my face. It compresses inside," she said.

Sebire insisted there was no reason her doctors should not be permitted to help her commit suicide. "I ask to be helped to die because I don't want this tumor to have the last word. I didn't fight for seven and a half years to have it having the last word," she said in the February interview, according to the Associated Press translation.

Assisted suicide is illegal in France, however. The law permits only passive euthanasia -- removing feeding and hydration tubes when a person is in a coma, or inducing a coma and then removing the tubes.

Sebire's lawyer had tried to convince a French court that it was "barbaric" to put her through the ordeal of dying slowly in an artificial coma, something that could take up to two weeks while her three children looked on in anguish.

The court turned down the appeal Monday.

At the same time, Sebire wrote a letter to French President Nicolas Sarkozy appealing for help, but he responded by suggesting top doctors should reexamine her for a second opinion.

Her plight and the questions it raised caused so much public debate in France that when Sebire was found dead Wednesday night, it made front-page news in heavyweight papers including Le Figaro and Le Parisien.

CNN senior international correspondent Jim Bittermann in Paris said that Sebire had many supporters in France, with hundreds of people writing to her to express their backing. Watch as euthanasia row divides France. »

"One of the reasons for this is this woman was a relatively young mother of three children, and many people could sympathize. People think 'what would I do in the same circumstances.' "

A French group called the Association for the Right to Die with Dignity, which took up Sebire's cause, believes laws must be changed to take such cases into account.

"It is not the liberty of a politician or a doctor -- it's the liberty of the person who is suffering, who has a terminal disease," said Jean-Luc Romero, president of the group.

"It's only the decision of the people who have a terminal disease to decide [whether they may die]."

Others in France disagree.

"It isn't because a citizen says 'I want this' that we should modify the law," said Patrick Verspieren, a Jesuit bioethics expert. "The law is already quite open."

France's prime minister and health and justice ministers all made clear they did not believe changes in French law were needed. E-mail to a friend

Copyright 2008 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.