The judges at the Palácio Ratton today highlighted “legislative oversights” in their decision, pointing out that parts of the law approved by Parliament in 2023 suggest patients have the right to choose between assisted suicide or euthanasia. However, the decree specifies that medically assisted death can only be carried out through euthanasia if assisted suicide is impossible due to physical incapacity.
Regarding the general principle of the law, the judges indicated that the Constitutional Court “reiterated and refined its jurisprudence” according to which “the Constitution neither imposes nor categorically prohibits the legalization of assisted death, granting the legislature a margin of discretion between the values of individual freedom and human life, particularly in clinical situations marked by severity, irreversibility, and suffering”.
This ruling follows a request for successive review by a group of PSD deputies and the Ombudsperson Maria Lúcia Amaral.
“The position of the Constitutional Court is that assisted death, as a matter of principle, is a political issue, leaving it to the legislature, in the exercise of its democratic legitimacy, to arbitrate the perennial tension between opposing constitutional values in this domain of life characterized by persistent and reasonable dissent among citizens,” the judges conclude.
The Constitutional Court declared today that some provisions of the law regulating medically assisted death are unconstitutional, while emphasizing that most of the decree complies with the fundamental law.
Lusa | 18:33 – 22/04/2025
Despite considering “numerous constitutional issues,” the Court notes that majorities found only three issues unconstitutional.
Firstly, the Court found that “several segments of the law assume the patient has the right to choose between the two methods of medically assisted death—suicide or euthanasia—when, in its current version, the law only permits euthanasia if the patient is physically unable to self-administer lethal drugs.”
“According to the Court, these legislative oversights, in an extremely sensitive matter, could create unnecessary difficulties for interpreters and generate an avoidable risk of misapplication of the law, violating the constitutional principle of legal certainty,” reads the communiqué.
Secondly, the Court declared unconstitutional the provision that regulates the manner of intervention by the medical specialist in the patient’s condition, “by not requiring an examination, unlike foreign legislations with euthanasia regimes closer to the Portuguese one”.
“In the Court’s view, this common omission challenges the suitability, objectivity, impartiality, and reliability of the medical judgment in verifying the clinical indications of assisted death, leading to insufficient protection of human life and violation of parliamentary law reserve. The unconstitutionality of this provision results in the unconstitutionality of Article 3, Paragraph 1, of the law, as it taints the decision to legalize medically assisted death under certain conditions,” they add.
Finally, the Constitutional Court declared unconstitutional the provision that obliges a health professional who refuses to perform or assist in the act of medically assisted death to specify the nature of the reasons for such refusal, believing it constitutes “an inappropriate, unnecessary, and disproportionate restriction on freedom of conscience”.
