The right to assistance in dying continues to gain ground. Spain's Parliament recently passed legislation, expected to come into effect in June, permitting doctors to assist adult patients to die if they have a “serious and incurable” disease that causes “unbearable suffering.”
The doctor may either prescribe a lethal dose of a drug that patients can take themselves — a mode known by various terms, including medical aid in dying, voluntary assisted dying, and physician-assisted suicide — or give the patient a lethal injection, known as voluntary euthanasia.
In February, the Portuguese Parliament passed legislation permitting voluntary euthanasia for patients who are terminally ill. Portugal’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, referred the law to the Constitutional Court, which rejected it on the grounds that it was insufficiently precise. Parliament is expected to pass a revised version, which should become law before the end of the year.