After a majority of voters in a referendum, Slovenia’s parliament passed a law granting terminally ill adults the right to end their lives.
With 50 votes in favor, 34 against, and three abstentions, the bill was approved by legislators on Friday, allowing for assisted dying in cases of intolerable suffering after all treatment options have been exhausted.
According to Slovenia’s STA news agency, the right to assisted dying won’t be available in the event of intolerable suffering brought on by mental illness.
In the upcoming weeks, it is anticipated to become effective.
In a consultative referendum last year, 55% of Slovenians voted against assisted suicide. Opponents of the law may attempt to sway enough votes to avert a new referendum.
Despite several amendments during its passage through parliament, the nation’s Commission for Medical Ethics announced this week that it remained firm in its position that the bill poses high ethical risks.
The “right]to assisted dying] does not represent a defeat for medicine,” according to Tereza Novak, a lawmaker from the ruling Freedom Movement, which had supported the bill.
The liberal MP claimed that it would be wrong for medicine to prevent people from dying if they so choose, and that it cannot do so.
The bill has been denounced by the conservative Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), who claims it “opens the door to a culture of death, … the loss of human dignity, and the minimization of the value of life, especially for the most vulnerable.”
The vote places the central European nation, along with Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium, and some other states in the United States, among those that allow terminally ill people to receive medical care to end their lives.
Source: Aljazeera
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