The short Portuguese legislature will end without a regulation of euthanasia in the country, despite the speed of the parties that supported it to agree on changes and send the text for the second time to the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. Last night the head of state announced that he was returning the bill to Parliament to clarify “the apparent contradictions regarding one of the causes of recourse to clinically assisted death.” The decree raises the need to suffer a “fatal ailment” to request euthanasia, although elsewhere it mentions the existence of an “incurable ailment” or “serious ailment.” In a note published on the web, the president asks the Assembly of the Republic to clarify this aspect: “The legislator has to choose between requiring for euthanasia and medically assisted suicide between only serious illness, serious and incurable disease or incurable disease and fatal ”.
The second argument put forward by the President of the Republic has to do with the social context and the possible influence of Spanish law, which he considers aligned with the European States that have approved “more drastic or radical” legislation compared to the Canadian proposals. or Colombia. Rebelo de Sousa asks Parliament for explanations for the withdrawal of the requirement of “fatal disease”, a modification introduced in the second proposal with respect to the first, and if this corresponds “to a considerable change in the weighting of the values of life and self-determination ”in Portuguese society. In the letter he sent to the President of the Assembly, he questions whether the approval of euthanasia in Spain has influenced the change. “What justifies, in terms of dominant social sentiment in our country, that it did not exist in February 2021, in the first version of the law, and that it now exists in November 2021, in its second version? The step taken in Spain? ”, Asks Rebelo de Sousa. There will be no immediate response from parliamentarians for this. Given that the Chamber will be dissolved in a few days by the President of the Republic to open the electoral period, which will culminate in the January 30 elections, the regulation of euthanasia will be a pending issue for the new legislature.
It is the second time in less than a year that Rebelo de Sousa vetoes the processing of the euthanasia law in Portugal, which had been agreed between the Socialist Party (PS) and various opposition groups. In his letter to the Chamber, he maintains that his decision does not weigh any “personal religious, ethical, moral, philosophical or political position, which would be more critical, if not the judgment that I formulate about what I consider to be the dominant sentiment in society. Portuguese ”. On the contrary, the Portuguese president gave the green light to the law that will regulate surrogacy in Portugal, which establishes that the pregnant woman can desist from delivering the baby until the moment of registering it (the law allows up to a maximum of 20 days after the birth).
Nine months ago, when the project on euthanasia first arrived at the Belém Palace, headquarters of the Headquarters of the State, Rebelo de Sousa sent the text to the Constitutional Court for consultation because it considered too imprecise “the concept of definitive injury of extreme gravity ”, Which is mentioned in the standard. The matter divided the high court, which finally declared that text unconstitutional, but also took the opportunity to clarify its legal criteria on the regulation of euthanasia. “The right to life cannot be translated into the duty to live in any circumstance,” declared the president of the Constitutional Court, João Caupersen, in his reading of the ruling last March. “The tension between the duty to protect life and respect for personal autonomy in extreme situations of suffering can be resolved through political-legislative options made by the representatives of the people elected in democracy,” defended the court.
The distribution of votes with respect to the law does not automatically trace the parliamentary division between left and right. In the session of last November 5, when the proposal went ahead with 138 votes in favor, 84 against and 5 abstentions, the law received the support of the PS, the Bloco de Esquerda, the Pessoas-Animais-Natureza (PAN), the Green Party (PEV) and Liberal Initiative (IL), as well as two unregistered deputies and 13 parliamentarians from the Social Democratic Party (PSD, center-right). In the opposite bloc, most of the ranks of the PSD, the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), the Social Democratic Center (right), Chega (extreme right) and seven socialist deputies agreed. The shift in positions shows how controversial it is to legislate on euthanasia in Portuguese society, where religion has even more weight than in Spain.
The supporters of the decriminalization of assisted death have already failed in their attempt in 2018. The bloc that is against it defended the call of a referendum on the matter, which in practice would have slowed the processing of the law if not 50% of the census was able to vote, something that did not happen in previous consultations and that made it possible to avoid passing the abortion law in 1998 and 2007.
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