Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa has signed into law a long-contested euthanasia law.
“The president of the republic has issued the decree—as he was obliged to do” by the Constitution, the presidency said in a statement on May 17th.
The final version of the “medically assisted dying” law was adopted by the parliament on May 11th with 129 votes in favour among the 230 representatives.
“The constitution obliges the president to enact a law which he has vetoed and which has (then) been confirmed by the Assembly of the Republic. I will sign it, of course, it is my constitutional duty,” De Sousa, a practising Catholic, said after the vote.
The bill to allow euthanasia for adults has passed through the parliament four times in the last three years, but each time it has either been voted down, sent for review by the constitutional court, or vetoed for clarifications of concepts such as “intense suffering.”
In this last round, de Sousa had sent it back to Parliament asking lawmakers to specify who would “attest” to whether a patient was physically incapable of requesting to be euthanized.
Instead of changing the text, the Socialist Party majority went straight to a second vote and garnered the needed supermajority to override the veto.
The law specifies that adults with “lasting” and “unbearable” pain can request to have their lives ended by a doctor unless deemed not mentally fit to make such a decision. It also states that euthanasia is only allowed when “medically assisted suicide is impossible due to a physical incapacitation of the patient.”
The law will likely come into force next autumn.
