The diploma on medically assisted death will be reviewed in plenary of the Assembly of the Republic on March 31, decided this Thursday by the conference of leaders.
The announcement was made by the spokeswoman for the leaders’ conference, socialist deputy Maria da Luz Rosinha, in statements to journalists at the end of the leaders’ conference meeting. On the same day, the new text will be subject to a vote.
For the PS, the parliamentary leader, Eurico Brilhante Dias, said that the parties that proposed the initiatives that serve as the basis for the final text understand that there are conditions to complete the changes next week, responding “fundamentally to two aspects raised by the Constitutional Court”.
Asked whether he is confident that the text that comes out of Parliament will be transformed into law, the socialist replied: “Of course.” “I do not want to issue an opinion on decisions that are legitimate of other sovereign bodies. (…) It is evident that the confidence I have also had the last time I voted on the diploma. The confidence I have is that depending on the issues raised we have the capacity and possibility to respond appropriately,” he added.
The BE’s parliamentary leader, Pedro Filipe Soares, also stressed that the parliamentary groups are working to have a text ready next week “capable of answering the questions posed by the TC in the last judgment”. “We believe that this last step will make the law better, more robust and will guarantee that the doubts raised by the TC will be resolved”, he added.
At the end of January, the Constitutional Court (TC) declared unconstitutional some of the norms of the decree that intended to regulate medically assisted death, in response to the request for preventive inspection by the President of the Republic.
The TC considered that “an intolerable lack of definition was created as to the exact scope of application” of the decree, concluding that, by characterizing the typology of suffering into “three characteristics (physical, psychological and spiritual) linked by the conjunction ‘and’, they are plausible and two antagonistic interpretations of this assumption are sustainable”.
In the opinion of the judges at the Ratton Palace, the legislator “raised doubt, which it is up to him to clarify, as to whether the requirement is cumulative (physical suffering, plus psychological suffering, plus spiritual suffering) or alternative (both physical and psychological suffering , like the spiritual)”.
However, in the same judgment, the TC considered constitutional the definitions of “serious and incurable illness” and “definitive injury of extreme gravity” contained in that decree, concepts that had raised doubts in the President of the Republic.
The Assembly of the Republic will have to approve for the fourth time a law on medically assisted death, an issue that has already been stopped twice after unconstitutionalities detected by the TC and another through a political veto by the President of the Republic.lo