It is yet another wait in one of the longest legislative processes underway in the Assembly of the Republic. The PS asked yesterday to postpone the vote on the specificity (article by article) of the text decriminalizing medically assisted death – requesting the postponement of the final global vote on the diploma by about a month, as Parliament is now Dedicate exclusively to discussing the State Budget (OE) for 2023. A process that will end on November 25.
If voted on yesterday, the diploma could go to plenary today, after the general vote on the OE2023. But it was precisely this agenda that the PS wanted to stop. According to a source from the bank’s direction to the DN, the socialists intend to carry out a “thorough analysis” of the text, which would not be possible if it had already been voted on: “The text lacks a detailed analysis, there ain’t no time to do it”.
According to the same source, after what happened to the last diploma – in which different expressions were used about the conditions under which it will be possible to request euthanasia, in what was the main argument for the veto of the President of the Republic – the direction of the group wants to ensure that there is no room for doubt about the wording. The coming month (the text should be voted in the first plenary with votes after the close of the budget debate) will therefore serve to examine the solutions recommended in the text (one diploma, resulting from the four initial diplomas, of the PS, BE, IL and PAN).
Blind the text for a veto
In other words, the PS wants to guarantee that it does not give Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa any new arguments for not issuing the diploma, as happened last November, when the President of the Republic rejected the text, claiming that it contained new rules to the first version (revised after the leadership of the Constitutional Court), which left him with “unexpected bewilderment”. It is the fact that the text alternately specifies “deadly”, “incurable” and/or “serious” illness as a condition for requesting medically assisted death, which prompted the head of state to ask for clarification about the exact conditions of that euthanasia whether assisted suicide is allowed. Wording errors recognized by the socialists, which caused irritation in the bank, because they had left the way for Marcelo’s veto – who is against euthanasia, although he has already guaranteed that his personal convictions will not hinder the president’s decision of the Republic.
It is scenarios like this that the PS wants to prevent it from happening again, paving the way for the end of this process, which has already gone through two parliamentary terms and is now entering the third. With an absolute majority in parliament, the Socialists gave a sign of this, even in the vote on most of the diplomas that now gave rise to the joint replacement text. “It is time to complete this process,” said Socialist deputy Alexandre Quintanilha from the pulpit of the meeting room.
The text is to be voted on in the first plenary session with votes after the end of the budget debate, at the end of November.
Once returned to Belém, and since the text has been changed, the President of the Republic keeps all presidential powers unaffected: he can resend the diploma to the Constitutional Court, veto or proclaim it. But in the event that a political veto is re-elected, the deputies can vote to reconfirm the diploma, without further changes, obliging the president to issue the diploma.
What is certain is that, if approved, predictably, the diploma will go to Belém at the end of November/beginning of December, without the changes advocated by the head of state: the parties opted for the concept of a “serious and incurable” disease as condition for medically assisted death, removing the phrase “fatal disease” from the pleadings. And they ignored the President of the Republic’s argument that the second draft of the text extended the scope of the law to cases other than fatal diseases, a proposition that all the proposing parties reject.
If the texts adopted in general on June 9 (most votes, from the PS, then collected 128 votes in favour, five abstentions and 88 votes against) contain only one surgical amendment to overturn Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa’s veto , during the work in the specialty, some substantive changes were made compared to the original texts, with the replacement text setting a minimum period of two months from the time of the request to the completion of the process, and a maximum period of 40 working days for that the request is taken up (55 days if a psychiatric examination takes place). Another change concerns the mandatory psychological follow-up of the medically supervised death applicant, unless the applicant expressly rejects this.
Chronology
Six years, three legislators
26 Apr 2016
Citizens’ movement Right to Die with Dignity delivers an 8,400-signature petition in the Assembly of the Republic in defense of the decriminalization of medically assisted death. This document gave rise to the first hearings in Parliament on this issue.
May 29, 2018
Euthanasia will be voted on for the first time via bills from PS, BE, PAN and PEV. They all fail, but the PS project is rejected by only five votes. PS and BE promise to pick up the theme again.
February 20, 2020
The decriminalization of medically assisted death is generally approved first. The PS bill – again the most voted out of the five submitted – gets 128 votes in favour, 84 against and 12 abstentions. The texts spend nearly a year in the specialty and return to the plenary for a final vote in January 2021, in the form of a single proposal signed by the five submitting parties. The diploma was approved with 136 votes in favour, 78 against and 4 abstentions.
March 15, 2020
Since the text uses “excessively indefinite terms”, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa sends the diploma to the Constitutional Court. A majority of seven judges to five declared the text unconstitutional, specifically the concept of “definitive injury of extreme seriousness according to scientific consensus” – a wording that “does not allow (…) that can be applied”.
Nov 5, 2021
After specifying the concepts envisaged by the Constitutional Court, the amended text was reapproved by 138 votes in favour, 84 against and five abstentions.
November 29, 2021
Marcelo vetoes the diploma, thus evoking confusion and incongruity between the concepts of serious, incurable and fatal disease.
Source: DN
