Dawn at the Polls: Slovenia Decides on the Right to Die
The gym at Stožice echoed with the soft squeak of sneakers and the murmur of voices long before the sun climbed above Ljubljana’s red-tiled roofs. Today was not a football match or a concert. It was a country pausing — a brief but profound collective breath — to decide whether the state will recognise a person’s legal right to end their life with medical assistance.
Across Slovenia, ballot boxes sat ready. Polling stations opened early and will close in the evening, with partial results due that night. For many, the referendum was intimate, a moral and medical crossroads where private pain collides with public law. For others, it has become a focal point in a broader cultural tug-of-war: between autonomy and sanctity, medical modernity and religious tradition.
How We Got Here
Parliament approved a law earlier this year that would allow lucid, terminally ill patients to request assisted dying if their suffering is unbearable and all reasonable treatments have been exhausted. The legislation, which excludes cases where unbearable suffering is caused solely by mental illness, grew out of debates that gripped Slovenia following a 2024 referendum that initially endorsed the change.
But the issue did not rest. A civic group calling itself Voice for the Children and the Family, backed by conservative politicians and influential clergy, collected 46,000 signatures to demand a repeat vote — comfortably surpassing the 40,000-signature threshold required to trigger another referendum.
The rules are stark: the law will come into force unless a majority of voters — whose turnout represents at least 20% of the 1.7 million eligible voters — reject it. In concrete terms, this is not just a philosophical fight; it is an arithmetic one, where mobilisation matters as much as conviction.
On the Ground: Voices from Stožice
At one ballot table, I met 63-year-old Romana, a woman whose life had been reshaped by illness. “I don’t want to imagine a life stretched thin by pain,” she told me, her voice steady. “Watching someone you love wither away teaches you what mercy could mean.” She said she would vote to keep the law.
A few chairs down, 24-year-old student Vid said the vote mattered because it was about trust: “It’s about trusting adults to make decisions about their own bodies. I support dignity and choice.”
Not everyone felt the same. Marija, in her late 50s, wore a small silver cross and spoke of family rituals and the moral architecture that had framed her life. “I believe in caring for life from beginning to natural end,” she said. “Once we start to licence death, what signal does that send about the value of those who are old, sick, or lonely?”
The Stakes: Law, Life, and the Limits of Consent
The law’s proponents frame it as the final refuge of personal dignity — a legal mechanism to spare people from needless suffering. Prime Minister Robert Golob has urged citizens to support it, saying each person deserves to make their own decision “about how, and with what dignity, one leaves this life.”
Opponents, including the Catholic Church, argue something else entirely: that such a step is incompatible with foundational moral teachings and could erode social protections for the vulnerable. The Voice for the Children and the Family has accused authorities of using the bill to “poison the relationship between state and family,” a phrase that captures the emotive tenor of the debate.
At stake are delicate questions: How do we ensure consent is truly free when illness, debt, or social isolation can distort choices? Can legal safeguards be robust enough to prevent coercion, implicit or explicit? How should a modern welfare state balance individual autonomy against collective responsibility?
Context and Comparisons
Slovenia is not alone in wrestling with these questions. Several European countries — including Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland — have legal frameworks allowing medical assistance in dying, each with distinct safeguards and limits. Some nations require strict procedural checks, second medical opinions, and waiting periods; others are more permissive.
Public opinion polls add texture to the debate. A recent survey published by the daily Dnevnik found that 54% of respondents supported legalisation, while 31% opposed and 15% were undecided. Those numbers are similar to the support seen in June last year, underscoring that while the majority tilts toward change, a sizable minority remains deeply uncomfortable.
What the Numbers Don’t Show
Statistics tell part of the story but not the small, human contours: the woman who sits beside a dying spouse for months, the doctor who wrestles with whether to follow strict protocol or relieve suffering now, the parish priest who hears confession and prays for a miracle. Law is a tool; culture is the soil in which it takes root.
Bigger Themes: Ageing, Care, and Who We Value
This referendum is also a mirror reflecting demographic and social trends across Europe: ageing populations, strained healthcare systems, and uneven access to palliative care. In places where hospice services are patchy, the legalisation of assisted dying becomes entangled with shortages of care, rather than standing purely as an expression of individual liberty.
“If we legalise assisted dying without simultaneously investing in palliative care and social supports, we risk offering death as an option by default rather than as a last resort,” said Dr. Ana Kovač, a palliative care specialist in Ljubljana. “Choice must be real, and for that to be true the alternatives must exist.”
Questions for the Reader
What does dignity mean to you at the end of life? Should the state set the boundaries for such private decisions, or simply ensure that people have the information, care and support to choose freely? Is it possible to craft laws that protect the vulnerable without denying agency to the suffering?
These are not easy questions, and they do not admit to neat conclusions. They force societies to map their values onto the lives of real people — to decide, collectively, what mercy looks like and who gets to define it.
Tonight and Beyond
When the polls close and the partial results land, Slovenia will have spoken — for now. If a majority votes against the law, the matter cannot be brought back to parliament for a year. If they uphold it, the law will become a new chapter in how the country cares for the dying.
Regardless of the outcome, this vote is a reminder that democracy is not only about counting ballots; it is about conversation, about how communities listen to pain, and about whether a society can hold both compassion and caution in its hands. Wherever you stand, ask yourself: how would you want to be remembered? How would you want your neighbours to be treated?
Tonight, as Slovenia waits, the country offers the rest of the world a lesson in wrestling with mortality — publicly, painfully, and together.
