The Portuguese Parliament has approved this Friday by a large majority the law that proposes the decriminalization of euthanasia, in a third attempt with which it aspires to save the suspicions of the Portuguese president, the conservative Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who has already stopped two attempts previous.
The reform has had the favorable vote of the majority of the representatives of the left formations, as well as of six deputies of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), which gave freedom of vote to its members. There was also an abstention in the ranks of Prime Minister Antonio Costa’s Socialist Party (PS).
The PSD, the main opposition formation, unsuccessfully demanded the calling of a referendum so that citizens could pronounce themselves at the polls on an issue that has been the subject of controversy for years, within a controversial plenary session in which the right accused the president of the Assembly to be biased.
The text now goes to the table of Rebelo de Sousa, who has the power to promulgate it, veto it or consult the Constitutional Court. The president, who has already expressed his misgivings about the supposed ambiguity of the initiative on previous occasions, has promised to rule in a matter of weeks, according to the RTP chain.
The law authorizes assisted death in the case of people of legal age with “serious and incurable” illnesses or “extremely serious definitive” injuries. It establishes a minimum period of two months between the beginning and the end of the process and requires the intervention of a medical professional.
