MADRID (AP) – Legislators voted Thursday to make Spain the sixth country in the world, and the fourth in Europe, to allow physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia for patients suffering from incurable diseases and for people in conditions unbearable permanents.
The lower house of the Spanish parliament voted 202-140 with two abstentions in the final approval of the euthanasia bill. Legislators from the leftist government coalition and other parties supported it, while conservative and far-right legislators voted “no” and promised to overturn the legislation in the future.
The Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, welcomed the approval of the project as an important step “towards the recognition of human rights”.
“We are moving towards a more humane and just society,” she told the Congress of Deputies.
The bill was the result of a long legislative journey that began three years ago and has gone through several rounds of review in parliamentary committees and the Senate. It is expected to take effect in mid-June, when Spain’s public health system will need to provide vital assistance in justified cases.
Euthanasia – when a doctor administers fatal drugs directly to a patient – is legal or sanctioned by courts in Belgium, Canada, Luxembourg, Colombia and the Netherlands. In Switzerland and some states in the United States, medically assisted suicide – when patients self-administer lethal drugs under medical supervision – is allowed.
Politicians in Portugal tried to pass a law similar to that of neighboring Spain, but the country’s Constitutional Court blocked the legislation this week, arguing that the bill was inaccurate in identifying the circumstances in which death procedures could occur.
According to the new Spanish law, the process for patients to obtain approval to die can take more than a month, with two written requests followed by consultations with medical professionals not previously involved in the case. Only after a fourth and final statement in which patients repeat their wish to die, can a regional committee of experts give the final go-ahead.
The law allows healthcare professionals, whether in the public or private system, to refuse to participate based on belief.
Protesters for and against the new law met in front of the lower house in Madrid while lawmakers voted.
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This story has been corrected to reflect that Spain is the sixth country in the world, not the seventh as previously reported, to allow euthanasia.