France, May 27 -- French MPs will on Tuesday vote on two landmark bills on palliative care and assisted dying. They're the result of months of debate shaped by a rare democratic experiment that brought together 184 randomly selected citizens to grapple with one of society's most intimate and divisive questions: how should we die?

Marc-Olivier Strauss-Kahn was on a high-speed train in November 2022 when his phone rang. The 71-year-old retired economist had no idea he was about to join what he would later describe as "the best social experience of my life".

The caller invited him to join France's citizens' convention on end-of-life care - President Emmanuel Macron's bid to involve the public in a national conversation about assisted dying...