Declared unconstitutional for a second time, the text decriminalizing medically assisted death will return to the deputies, but with a planned return to Belém. For the PS, the issue raised by the Constitutional Court (TC) is “semantics”. “When it comes to correcting a word, we’re here to do it with all the other parties contributing to this text. That’s what we’re going to do next,” assured Socialist deputy Isabel Moreira. An understanding shared by all the banks that approved the decree, from IL to BE, including PAN and Livre.
Emphasizing the need to read the judgment of the TC and the many explanations of vote for a decision that was again tangential (seven judges voted in favour, six voted against), Isabel Moreira even spoke of a “victory”, given that the declaration of unconstitutionality concerns the lack of a definition of a specific term. “Most of the arguments of the President of the Republic failed, namely whether the concept of a serious and incurable disease would be unconstitutional. in the light of another concept, which already existed in another diploma, referring to a deadly disease,” the socialist deputy insisted.
The Liberal Initiative also sees the implementation of the law getting closer. “It’s a matter of writing”, deputy João Cotrim de Figueiredo emphasized: “We will be here to correct the text and this will allow us in Portugal to have a medically assisted death law that can grant this right to anyone who wants to use it”.
The Bloco de Esquerda, in the voice of José Manuel Pureza, spoke of a “small matter” and a declaration of unconstitutionality “a little incomprehensible”.
“Intolerable Blunder”
The TC had already said in the previous judgment on the same subject that medically assisted death does not violate the Constitution, but that the situations in which it can occur must be “clear, foreseeable and manageable”. Guarantees that the third version of the diploma still does not offer: the judges of the TC returned this Monday to declare the unconstitutionality of several norms of the decree, declaring the president, João Caupers, in a “unbearable vagueness” of the new text, which the President of the Republic submitted to the advisory judges for consideration at the beginning of this month.
It is now about the concept of ‘suffering’. In the words of João Caupers, when he characterized suffering in “three characteristics, physical, psychological and spiritual, connected by the conjunction “and”, two antagonistic interpretations are plausible and sustainables of this assumption” – in the light of the text it is equally permissible for this requirement to be cumulative or alternative. a doubt that it is for the legislator to clarify.
That is, for the TC, the text allows for two possibilities of interpretation, both “plausible”, but leading to “contradictory practical results” – “reserving medically assisted death for people who, as a result of final injury of extreme seriousness or severe and incurable illness, report suffering of great intensity that responds cumulatively to the [três] suffering” or admit medically assisted death in the situations mentioned, but only in the case of one of the three types of suffering.
Right calls for referendum
On the right, the news of a new leader was cited by the TC as further evidence that this issue should be subject to a referendum. In fact, the leader of the PSD promised that at the beginning of the next legislature, in September, he will again propose a plebiscite on the decriminalization of euthanasia (the proposal has already been presented in this session and cannot be repeated).
“The PSD is right. Enough stubbornness. The discussion about euthanasia must go beyond the four walls of parliament and be the subject of a referendum. Direct democracy is the space for a deep discussion and a safe decision, as the issue must be pre-approved by the Constitutional Court,” Montenegro wrote on the social network Twitter. André Ventura also defended that the referendum is the “only way to get a . to find “solution to this problem in a peaceful and consensual way”.
The PCP, which also voted against the diploma, said it hoped that proponents of the bill would “think about” an issue that “raises a number of concerns”.
With this new declaration of unconstitutionality this is the third time the medically assisted death certificate has been returned to the Assembly of the Republic (in addition to the two TC losses, there was also a political veto by Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa).
Source: DN
