Slovenia’s parliament had authorized a regulation in July, permitting assisted dying after a 2024 referendum supported it.
Printed On 23 Nov 2025
Slovenians have rejected in a referendum a regulation that allowed terminally sick adults to finish their lives, after critics mounted a marketing campaign towards the laws.
About 53 p.c of 1.7 million eligible voters voted towards the regulation that proposed legalising assisted dying, based on preliminary outcomes launched by the election authorities on Sunday.
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The outcomes imply the regulation’s implementation will likely be suspended for not less than 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 referred to 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 Youngsters 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 loss of life,” Primc mentioned after the vote.
Beneath the disputed regulation, terminally sick sufferers would have had the correct to assist in dying if their struggling was insufferable and all therapy choices had been exhausted.
It will even have allowed for assisted dying if therapy presents had no cheap 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 regulation “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 regulation and human dignity”.
In June 2024, 55 p.c had backed the regulation.
Turnout at Sunday’s referendum was 40.9 p.c – simply sufficient for the no vote to fulfill the brink.
A number of European nations, together with Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland, enable terminally sick individuals to obtain medical assist to finish their lives. Nonetheless, it stays against the law 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.
