Historic day for Spain. With 202 votes in favour, 141 against and 2 abstentions, the Chamber of Deputies approved today the law on euthanasia proposed by the PSOE, the party of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. The law will enter into force within three months and Spain will become the seventh country in the world to recognize euthanasia after Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Canada, New Zealand and Colombia. Assisted suicide is practiced in Switzerland.
The 141 votes against the law come from right-wing and centre-right parties: Partido Popular, Vox and Union del Pueblo Navarro.
According to the provision, active euthanasia, i.e. the administration of death-inducing drugs by a doctor, will become a provision of the NHS. Adult citizens who suffer from "serious and incurable diseases" or "serious, chronic and disabling pathologies" which prevent self-sufficiency and which generate "constant and intolerable physical and mental suffering" may benefit from it. The law establishes that people who wish to be helped to die must confirm their will at least four times and must present medical reports necessary to prove and document their condition. The request must be examined and accepted by an examining commission. The same law also regulates the assisted suicide, which provides that it is the patient himself, subject to a prescription and supplied by a doctor, who administers the substance that causes his death.
We recall that even before the approval of the law, in 11 of the 17 autonomous communities in Spain it was allowed passive euthanasia which allows you to suspend treatment or switch off the machinery that keeps a patient alive.
“Today we are a more humane, fairer and freer country,” he wrote on Twitter the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez. “The law on euthanasia, widely requested by society, has become a reality. Thanks to all the people who fought tirelessly to ensure that the right to die with dignity was recognized in Spain".
