Slovenia’s parliament has passed a law giving terminally-ill adults the right to end their lives, after a majority of voters backed the move in a referendum.
Lawmakers approved the bill on Friday, with 50 votes in favour, 34 against and three abstentions, meaning that assisted dying will be allowed in cases of unbearable suffering in which all treatment options have been exhausted.
The right to assisted dying will not be available in the case of unbearable suffering resulting from mental illness, according to Slovenia’s STA news agency.
It is expected to come into force in the coming weeks.
In a consultative referendum last year, 55 percent of Slovenians voted in favour of assisted suicide. Opponents of the law may try to gather enough support to force another referendum.
The country’s Commission for Medical Ethics said this week that it remained firm in its position that the bill carries high ethical risks despite several amendments during its passage through parliament.
Tereza Novak, a lawmaker from the governing Freedom Movement, which had supported the bill, told parliament that the “right [to assisted dying] does not represent a defeat for medicine”.
“It would be wrong for medicine to deprive people of their right to die if they want to and medicine cannot help them,” the liberal MP said.
The conservative Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) has denounced the bill, saying it “opens the door to a culture of death, the loss of human dignity and the minimisation of the value of life, in particular of the most vulnerable”.
The vote means the central European country will join several others that allow terminally ill people to receive medical help to end their lives, including Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and Belgium, as well as some states in the United States.
Last month, the UK parliament voted to legalise assisted dying, although the bill must still clear the upper chamber of parliament.
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