Demonstration against assisted suicide in Portugal. The Portuguese parliament has passed a law that allows people to be assisted at the end of their lives in certain strictly limited circumstances. Medical professionals will be allowed to perform euthanasia procedures if their patients suffer from an incurable illness or serious injury and are unable to end their own lives.
Under the provisions of the new law, residents over the age of 18 will be allowed to request assistance to end their lives if they are terminally ill and experiencing unbearable suffering. The law will apply only to those who are in constant and excruciating pain. And only if these people are not recognized as mentally incapable of making the decision to end their lives. The law will only apply to citizens and legal residents of Portugal and will not extend to foreigners.
The vote overrode the veto of the country’s conservative president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who is also a devout Catholic. The head of state had blocked several previous versions of the bill because of “extremely vague concepts,” and later noted that the wording used to describe incurable diseases was still contradictory and needed clarification.
Almost all members of the ruling Socialist Party, as well as three smaller left-center parties, supported the bill. Isabel Moreira, a Socialist Party politician who shepherded the bill through parliament, welcomed the outcome of the vote. According to her, this is an example of the implementation of the freedoms that people sought during the Portuguese Revolution of 1974, which marked the beginning of democracy.
Opponents of the euthanasia bill called for a referendum on the issue and expressed doubt that the law would ever be enacted. Even if it did, they claimed, “there will not be a single doctor in Portugal” willing to act in accordance with its provisions.
Now the President is obliged to sign the law within eight days of receiving it after its publication in the official press. However, the reform can be disrupted, or at least postponed, if one out of every ten deputies officially appeals to the Constitutional Court to review it. Several deputies have already announced their intention to do so.
Euthanasia is fully legal in three European countries: Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. But assisted suicide and passive euthanasia – in various forms – are legal in many other European countries, including neighboring Spain, which borders Portugal.