Church leaders in Portugal have welcomed moves by their country’s president to block a new euthanasia law, citing its imprecision and implications for human rights.
“I find it strange that the Twenty-First Century state feels entitled and duty-bound, in the name of civilisational progress, to foster a culture of death,” said Bishop Antonino Fernandes Dias of Portalegre-Castelo Branco.
“Nobody is going to ask parliamentarians to enter upon a metanoia process… We merely ask them not to forget the real problems of those who trusted them and whom they promised to serve.”
The 72-year-old bishop was reacting to a weekend letter from President Marcelo Rebelo De Sousa to the Constitutional Tribunal, questioning the compatibility of the law on “medically assisted death”, passed on 29 January, with Portugal’s legal order.
Preaching on Sunday, he said “omniscient and omnipotent” legislators had ignored advice from top medical professors, jurists and bioethicists, while the centre-left government of premier Antonio Costa also appeared intent on using “fracturing causes” to conceal a crisis caused by Covid-19 and other national problems.
The law, merging five right-to-die bills, passed by 136 votes to 78 in the 230-seat Lisbon parliament, and will enable mentally fit over-18s to request assistance in dying if faced with “intolerable suffering, with extremely serious and permanent harm… or incurable and fatal disease.”