Parliament decriminalizes euthanasia, the law could come into force as early as the fall

After a laborious legislative process, the Portuguese Parliament voted on Friday, May 12, the final version of a law decriminalizing euthanasia. A vote that ranks this country on the Iberian Peninsula among the few allowing a person with an incurable disease to end their suffering. Euthanasia and assisted suicide are now authorized in a handful of European states, such as those of Benelux, the first to have authorized them, and neighboring Spain.

The law was adopted partly thanks to the Socialists who have an absolute majority: 129 deputies voted for and 81 against, 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 the socialist deputy Isabel Moreira, one of the main voices in favor of the decriminalization of euthanasia.

Coming into force in autumn

A parliamentary majority led by the ruling Socialist Party had already spoken out four times over the past three years in favor of the decriminalization of assisted death. The text then came up against 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 could 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 after having been challenged, also twice, by the Constitutional Court, in particular because of“inaccuracies”. The new version of the law now provides that euthanasia is only authorized in cases where “medically assisted suicide is impossible due to the patient’s physical incapacity”.