Image – Shutterstock: Ljubljana Castle, Slovenia
Slovenia has delivered a heartening verdict for the defenders of life. In a binding referendum held on 23 November voters rejected the country’s assisted suicide legislation, with roughly 53 percent voting against and only 47 percent in favour. Turnout was just over 40 percent, and the “no” vote comfortably met the legal threshold for revoking legislation, opposition from at least 20 percent of the 1.7-million-person electorate. The result stops the law coming into force and prevents parliament from returning to the same issue for at least a year.
Slovenia’s parliament passed the law in July 2025 after a consultative referendum in 2024 indicated majority support for legalisation, around 55 percent. Proponents presented state suicide as a compassionate answer to terminal illness and severe suffering. The bill would have allowed mentally competent terminally ill adults to self-administer lethal medication once their suffering was judged “unbearable” and treatment options exhausted. It explicitly excluded cases based solely on mental illness.
Yet Slovenians have now said, clearly and democratically, that compassion does not require killing. A civil society initiative, supported by the Catholic Church and the conservative parliamentary opposition, gathered more than 46,000 signatures, well above the 40,000 required, to trigger a second vote. That campaign insisted that true dignity is found in care and the protection of every human life, not in offering poison as a solution to suffering.
A central figure was Aleš Primc and his organisation Voice for Children and Families. When the results arrived, Primc declared that “compassion” and “solidarity and justice” had won, framing the outcome as a rejection of social reforms “based on death and poisoning”. It’s clear that many Slovenians sensed the obvious danger of normalising assisted suicide: once the state authorises doctors to help end life, the pressure on the elderly, disabled, and chronically ill will grow.
SPUC’s Communications Manager, Peter Kearney says, “For home audiences watching assisted suicide proposals debated at Westminster and Holyrood, Slovenia is a timely reminder that laws can be challenged, minds can change, and ordinary citizens can defend life at the ballot box. Slovenia’s vote is a watershed worth celebrating: the people of Europe are waking up to the terrifying dangers of such reckless proposals. SPUC will continue to fight to defeat assisted suicide legislation in the UK and protect the long-standing moral expectation on healthcare professionals to preserve life.”
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