The four plans remove the “deadly disease” requirement as a criterion for decriminalizing medically assisted death.
The Portuguese parliament on Thursday approved in first reading four bills from the Socialist Party, the Left Bloc, the IL and the PAN that regulate the decriminalization of medically assisted death and are now monitoring the work of the committees.
A majority of the SP seats – including parliamentary leader Eurico Brilhante Dias – and the Left Bloc, the Liberal Initiative and the sole Free Member, Rui Tavares, and the PAN, Ines Sousa Real, voted in favor of the four. Chega, the communist bloc and the vast majority of PSD MPs, including parliamentary leader Paulo Mota Pinto and Secretary-General José Silvano, voted against.
The four plans eliminate the requirement of the “deadly disease” as a criterion for the decriminalization of medically assisted death. The PS (Socialists), the BE (Left Bloc) and the Liberal Initiative are proposing euthanasia in cases of “definitive injury of extreme severity” or “serious and incurable disease”. With regard to the latter criterion, the PAN (party animals, animals and nature) presupposes the condition of “serious or incurable disease”.
The latest version of the decree, adopted in November 2021, had the following wording for the legal practice of medically assisted death: and informed, in a state of unbearable pain, with definitive damage of extreme severity or incurable and deadly disease, when exercised or assisted by health professionals ”.
Elsewhere in the bill, however, the term “serious or incurable disease” first appeared, instead of “incurable and deadly disease”, which is one of the rules, was defined as “a serious, life-threatening disease in advanced and a progressive stage, incurable and irreversible, which causes pain of great intensity “.
From the outset, the head of state has argued that there should be a wide-ranging debate in Portuguese society, but has always refused to disclose his personal position and await a decision – publication, veto or referral to the Constitutional Court – before reaching a him any legislation.
On Saturday in Santarem, the president Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said he would “wait and see” the euthanasia bill.
The first time MPs tried to legislate on the issue was in May 2018, but the PS, BE, PAN and PEV bills ended up being voted against.
Two years later, the same parties resubmitted the bills, joining the IL, which was then represented by the sole MP, João Cotrim de Figueiredo.
The law, approved by a majority of parliament, went to the presidential palace on February 18, 2021 and the same day Rebelo de Sousa sent it to the Constitutional Court for a review.
About a month later, the court rejected the bill and the president vetoed it and returned to parliament, where a new final text was adopted by a large majority in November of that year, with some changes, including a new original definitions to clarify the concepts, eight in total, from medically assisted death to “definitive injury”, serious or incurable disease.
The document returned to the presidential palace at a time when the political crisis had already settled after parliament voted against the 2022 state budget bill and the parliamentary elections scheduled for January 30th.
In late November, Rebelo de Sousa vetoed the law, stressing that the new text used different expressions to define the type of illness required, and argued that the legislature had to choose between “only serious illness”, “serious and incurable”. disease “and” incurable and deadly disease “.
If parliament wants to “even choose to waive the requirement that the disease be fatal, and therefore extend the license for medically assisted death,” according to Rebelo de Sousa, it will choose a “more radical or radical view.” The president also wondered if this was the case “In the dominant feeling in Portuguese society”.
