The right to die with dignity
Portugal’s earlier approved euthanasia law – published on the 25th of May, 2023 – is going nowhere.
In fact, it is going ‘’back deep into the drawer’, writes Correio de Manhã, the country’s biggest and most popular newspaper.
According to the approved law, people aged over 18 should be allowed to request assistance in dying if they are terminally ill and in intolerable suffering.
It would only cover those with ‘lasting’ and ‘unbearable’ pain and be applicable to nationals and legal residents only.
However, since the recent May 18 elections, parties in favour of the decriminalisation of medically-assisted death (PS Socialists, IL, BE, Livre e PAN) no longer have the number of MPs required to approve the new law.
Today, the majority of MPs in parliament are those representing AD (an alliance of PSD Social Democrats and CDS Christian Democrats) which has no interest whatsoever in reopening the euthanasia debate whereas the second biggest party – far-right CHEGA – is frontally against the idea.
The euthanasia law was first approved in 2021 in Parliament but never got beyond that – seeing repeated vetoes by both the conservative President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, a devout churchgoer and by the Constitutional Court. In a period of four years parliamentarian decisions have been twarted five times.
Moreover, a large number of doctors continues to raise moral objections to carrying out euthanasia, as they do over abortions. Even more poignant in this respect is that palliative care doesn’t get off the ground.
Despite hopeful initiatives, the Palliative Care Association denounced in the beginning of the year that more than 70% of patients do not have timely access to palliation, a value that rises to 90% in the case of children.
With Portugal moving firmly to the right, anyone hoping for a breakthrough in this deeply Catholic country has to wait for an indefinite period of time.
Enjoy your week Approveite a semana (pic Público/Sapo)
