Slovenia’s parliament had accepted a legislation in July, permitting assisted dying after a 2024 referendum supported it.
Printed On 23 Nov 2025
Slovenians have rejected in a referendum a legislation that allowed terminally ailing adults to finish their lives, after critics mounted a marketing campaign towards the laws.
About 53 % of 1.7 million eligible voters voted towards the legislation that proposed legalising assisted dying, in accordance with preliminary outcomes launched by the election authorities on Sunday.
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The outcomes imply the legislation’s implementation can be suspended for at the least one 12 months. Slovenia’s parliament had approved the law in July, permitting assisted dying after a 2024 referendum supported it.
However the new vote was known as after a civil group, backed by the Catholic Church and the conservative parliamentary opposition, gathered greater than the 40,000 signatures required for a repeat.
Ales Primc, head of Voice for the Kids and the Household, the NGO that organised the no vote marketing campaign, reacted to the outcomes, saying “solidarity and justice” had received.
“We’re witnessing a miracle. The tradition of life has defeated the cult of demise,” Primc mentioned after the vote.
Underneath the disputed legislation, terminally ailing sufferers would have had the appropriate to help in dying if their struggling was insufferable and all remedy choices had been exhausted.
It could even have allowed for assisted dying if remedy gives had no affordable prospect of restoration or enchancment within the affected person’s situation, however to not finish insufferable affected by psychological sickness.
Prime Minister Robert Golob had urged residents to again the legislation “so that every of us can resolve for ourselves how and with what dignity we’ll finish our lives”.
However the Catholic Church has mentioned permitting assisted dying “contradicts the foundations of the Gospel, pure legislation and human dignity”.
In June 2024, 55 % had backed the legislation.
Turnout at Sunday’s referendum was 40.9 % – simply sufficient for the no vote to fulfill the brink.
A number of European international locations, together with Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland, enable terminally ailing folks to obtain medical assist to finish their lives. Nonetheless, it stays a criminal offense in others, even in circumstances of extreme struggling.
In Could, France’s decrease home of parliament approved a right-to-die bill in a primary studying. The British parliament is debating comparable laws.
