Slovenia referendum rejects assisted dying law for terminally ill adults | Health News

Slovenia’s parliament had approved a law in July, allowing assisted dying after a 2024 referendum supported it.

Slovenians have rejected in a referendum a law that allowed terminally ill adults to end their lives, after critics mounted a campaign against the legislation.

About 53 percent of 1.7 million eligible voters voted against the law that proposed legalising assisted dying, according to preliminary results released by the election authorities on Sunday.

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The results mean the law’s implementation will be suspended for at least one year. Slovenia’s parliament had approved the law in July, allowing assisted dying after a 2024 referendum supported it.

But the new vote was called after a civil group, backed by the Catholic Church and the conservative parliamentary opposition, gathered more than the 40,000 signatures required for a repeat.

Ales Primc, head of Voice for the Children and the Family, the NGO that organised the no vote campaign, reacted to the results, saying “solidarity and justice” had won.

“We are witnessing a miracle. The culture of life has defeated the cult of death,” Primc said after the vote.

Under the disputed law, terminally ill patients would have had the right to aid in dying if their suffering was unbearable and all treatment options had been exhausted.

It would also have allowed for assisted dying if treatment offers had no reasonable prospect of recovery or improvement in the patient’s condition, but not to end unbearable suffering from mental illness.

Prime Minister Robert Golob had urged citizens to back the law “so that each of us can decide for ourselves how and with what dignity we will end our lives”.

But the Catholic Church has said allowing assisted dying “contradicts the foundations of the Gospel, natural law and human dignity”.

In June 2024, 55 percent had backed the law.

Turnout at Sunday’s referendum was 40.9 percent – just enough for the no vote to meet the threshold.

Several European countries, including Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland, allow terminally ill people to receive medical help to end their lives. However, it remains a crime in others, even in cases of severe suffering.

In May, France’s lower house of parliament approved a right-to-die bill in a first reading. The British parliament is debating similar legislation.