Euthanasia is always in the news these days, alas.
Portugal’s Parliament legalized lethal injection euthanasia recently. But the country’s president sent it to the Constitutional Court for review. The Court turned thumbs down. From the AP story:
Portugal’s Constitutional Court on Monday blocked a law passed by parliament introducing euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill and gravely injured people.
The court said in a statement that the law is imprecise in identifying the circumstances under which those procedures can occur. The judges rejected the law in a 7-5 ruling . . .
The governing center-left Socialist Party, which was the driving force behind the bill, said that if the head of state sends the bill back to parliament it will reword the legislation and pass it again.
Meanwhile, the New Mexico senate passed an assisted-suicide-legalization bill a bit more restrictive than that passed in the State house, for example doing away with the requirement that death certificates be falsified to list the underlying disease as the cause of death — currently the law in states such as Washington and Colorado — and deleting a provision that would have opened facilities that disallowed employees from participating in assisted suicide to potential civil liability.
If the two versions of the legalization bill can be reconciled, observers expect that it will be signed by the governor.
Be careful what you ask for New Mexico; you just might get it.