On Friday, the Portuguese parliament voted in favor of euthanasia for the third time in almost two years, even though, as happened in previous attempts, the Constitutional Court or the country’s president could prevent the bill from becoming law.
Lawmakers have passed a bill allowing euthanasia and assisted suicide in Portugal, the parliament speaker said, although exact voting figures are not immediately available.
Center-left parties in the predominantly Catholic country were the driving force behind the bill, as they were with laws that allowed abortion in 2007 and same-sex marriage in 2010.
PORTUGAL APPROVES EUTHANASIA AND MEDICAL-ASSISTED SUICIDE FOR THE TERMINALLY ILL DESPITE PROTESTS
The bill requires the approval of the head of state to become law. President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa could choose to block the legislation again or send it once again to the Constitutional Court for scrutiny. This could delay the law for several months.
Inaccurate wording and unconstitutional aspects frustrated the two previous attempts to have the law enacted.
Protesters hold placards outside the Portuguese Parliament during a ‘silent demonstration’ promoted by the Federation for Life on the day the Portuguese Parliament debates draft laws to legalize euthanasia, June 9, 2022, in Lisbon, Portugal. After three votes, the Portuguese parliament voted in favor of allowing euthanasia in the country.
(Horacio Villalobos#Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)
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Euthanasia is when a doctor directly administers fatal drugs to a patient. Medically assisted suicide is when patients administer the lethal drug themselves, under medical supervision.
New rules in the latest version of the bill include the mandatory involvement of a psychologist in the process from start to finish and a minimum two-month wait between request and death.
The bill provides that the patient’s request must be “repeated, serious, made freely and informed, in situations of very intense suffering, with extremely serious definitive injury or serious and terminal illness”. The patient requesting death must wish freely at least six times.
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The request is accepted or rejected, and the entire procedure is supervised, by a national committee composed of two jurists, a doctor, a nurse and a bioethicist.
