2023-05-12 13:45:15
At the end of a laborious legislative process, the Portuguese Parliament voted on Friday the final version of a law decriminalizing euthanasia, which will rank Portugal among the few countries allowing a person suffering from an incurable disease to put an end to his sufferings.
• Read also: Euthanasia will be possible for children under 12 in the Netherlands
• Read also: Medical aid in dying: the question should not be simply medical
• Read also: Euthanized 16 years following slaughtering her five children
• Read also: Expanding medical assistance in dying ‘doesn’t go too far’ says doctor
The law was adopted thanks in particular to the Socialists who have an absolute majority: 129 deputies voted for and 81 once morest, out of the 230 members of the Assembly.
“We are confirming a law that has been voted on several times by a very large majority,” welcomed Socialist MP Isabel Moreira, one of the main voices in favor of the decriminalization of euthanasia.
A parliamentary majority led by the ruling Socialist Party had already voted four times in favor of the decriminalization of assisted death over the past three years. But the text then came up once morest the reservations of the Constitutional Court and President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, a conservative and fervent Catholic.
In order to overcome the last veto of the Head of State, who now has eight days to promulgate the law, the Socialists had decided to vote for the same text a second time.
After the publication of the implementing decrees, the law might come into force in the fall, according to estimates quoted by the local press.
The text of the law has been reformulated several times in order to take into account the remarks of the president, who vetoed it twice, and following having been challenged, also twice, by the Constitutional Court due in particular to “inaccuracies”.
The new version of the law now provides that euthanasia is only authorized in cases where “medically assisted suicide is impossible due to a physical incapacity of the patient”.
To defend his last veto, Mr. Rebelo de Sousa had asked the deputies to specify who was authorized to “certify” this impossibility. But the parliamentarians this time refused to modify the text.
The questions raised by the Head of State might be clarified “in the decrees for the application of the law”, underlined Catarina Martins, the leader of the Left Bloc (BE, extreme left).
If the law is confirmed by Parliament, “it’s not a tragedy” conceded Mr. Rebelo de Sousa, believing that it raised “no constitutional problems”.
Both for the defenders and for the detractors of this law, the vote of the Parliament will not put an end to the public debate on this divisive subject in a country with a strong Catholic tradition.
“The adoption of this law was relatively quick compared to other major countries,” said Paulo Santos, a member of the movement for “the right to die with dignity”.
But “the fight does not stop there”, because, he notes, many doctors risk invoking a conscientious objection not to practice euthanasia, as some do in relation to abortion, legalized in 2007 by referendum.
“It is to be expected that euthanasia will provoke even more resistance,” he told AFP.
For their part, the opponents of the decriminalization of euthanasia regret that the question was not the subject of a referendum and hope that the Constitutional Court will be seized once more by opposition parliamentarians.
“It is a whim of the deputies who did not want to listen to anyone,” argued José Seabra Duque, member of the Portuguese Federation for Life.
Euthanasia and assisted suicide are now authorized in a handful of European countries, such as those of Benelux, the first to have authorized them, and neighboring Spain.
1683922374
#Portuguese #parliament #decriminalizes #euthanasia
