Parliament approves bill for medically assisted suicide for third time
The bill now goes for final drafting before being sent to Portugal's head of state, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who has the options of signing it into law.
Portugal’s parliament on Friday passed a bill to decriminalise medically assisted death at its final reading – the third time that it has approved such a reform, with the previous ones having been vetoed by the country’s president.
The bill was approved with the votes of most members of the governing Socialist Party, of the members for the Liberal Initiative (IL) and for the Left Bloc (BE), and of the sole members for People-Animals-Nature (PAN) and Livre as well as six members of the centre-right Social Democrati Party (PSD).
The populist Chega (Enough) party and the Communist Party (PCP) voted against.
Six Socialist members also voted against – Joaquim Barreto, Pedro Cegonho, Sobrinho Teixeira, Romualda Fernandes, Cristina Sousa and Maria João Castro – and one Socialist abstained, José Carlos Alexandrino.
On the PSD benches, Catarina Rocha Ferreira, Hugo Carvalho, Isabel Meireles, André Coelho Lima, Sofia Matos and Adão Silva voted in favour of the bill, while three of their party colleagues abstained: Lina Lopes, Jorge Salgueiro Mendes and Ofélia Ramos.
In all, 210 of parliament’s 230 members were present in the plenary session where the vote took place.
The bill now goes for final drafting before being sent to Portugal’s head of state, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who has the options of signing it into law, vetoing it (although this an be overturned by a simply majority of the 230 members) or ask the Constitutional Court to review it for any legal problems.
