How Slovenia Overturned a Law Allowing Assisted Suicide
On January 21, the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) and EPC-USA held a strategic meeting in Washington DC.
Alés Primc, (second from the right) was a key organizer of the referendum campaign that overturned Slovenia’s assisted suicide law.
Slovenia is the first country to legalize assisted suicide and then overturn the law through a referendum.
Alés began his presentation by thanking (Alex Schadenberg) for helping them with advice, information and direction for the successful referendum campaign in Slovenia.
This is the message that Alés shared.
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The Slovenian government held a referendum in 2024 based on the concept of legalizing euthanasia. Slovenians passed the 2024 referendum by a 55 – 45% margin.
The Slovenian government then introduced a law to legalize poisoning by assisted suicide that passed in July 2025.
In Slovenia they do not collect signatures in the street, the people must go to the public office to sign in support of a referendum campaign. It was very hard to collect these signatures. We had 35 days to collect signatures and it took us until the final few days to get the signatures.
The polls showed that 30% of the people were planning to support the referendum.
Alés first wanted to say that they considered their victory to be a miracle.
It was important that they got all of the opposition political parties on their side as this legislation was pushed by the government. The opposition parties had political reason to support the campaign. Political parties have local structures that enabled them to collect the signatures and get out the vote.
It was important that the Churches recognized this referendum as their referendum. Not all of the Churches joined the campaign in the beginning, but once they got going they all joined.
It was important that the medical associations supported the campaign. These organizations didn’t want to be involved directly with the campaign but it was very important that they were on our side. These groups didn’t like that we used strong language and they wanted to use “nice” words, but they were on our side.
Most doctors do not want to participate in the “dirty job” of killing and they recognized that if some doctors participate that it would change medicine for everyone. They saw it as a law that created new obligations that were directly opposed to their professional ethics. If they didn’t get them involved they may have only fought for conscientious objection, but they may have done very little.
When the referendum was approved, the structures within the medical association began to move on the issue.
At the same time, all of the Churches in Slovenia made a common statement supporting the referendum. This was important because it created a common position but it also changed the media response since the media will often attack the Catholic Church, but they couldn’t because every christian and non-christian religious group supported the referendum.
The common statement made every religious group decide that this referendum was their referendum. As the referendum day approached more and more religious groups directly participated in the get-out-the vote campaign. It was incredible to see all of these groups becoming directly involved.
Another outcome of the common statement was that every religious group organized their own prayer.
Another development was the reaction of Croatians who viewed the referendum as their referendum because they knew that if Slovenia legally poisoned their citizens then Croatia would likely be next. Croatia is directly south of Slovenia.
The referendum became a common battle for all groups and we cooperated with them.
Language.
They decided to not use any words that are used by their opponents. They decided to do everything that is possible to win. They were not battling an idea, they were battling to win.
To win, they decided that they would only use their language. They never used the name of the law. The name of the law was designed to sell the law. They noticed in other countries, that groups will refer to legislation by it’s name — voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide. They would have lost if they used the actual name.
Alés always stated that this was the law that allows poisoning of the people. They decided that they would speak about poisoning people.
They asked – What is the intention of the poisoning lobby? The opposition frightened Slovenians by telling them that they would suffer. They wanted everyone to fear the last days of their life. They succeeded in their message through years of brainwashing people during the government debates.
Nobody in Slovenia, or the western world, wants to suffer. Fair enough, but the opposition message was ridiculous. So they decided to not speak about suffering. They did not speak about suffering because people were already brainwashed to fear death.
They did not speak about euthanasia or assisted suicide but poisoning.
When speaking about poisoning they did not need to speak about the difference between euthanasia and assisted suicide because both involved poisoning. Speaking about prescribing or injecting doesn’t help, with poisoning there is no difference. The person dies from being poisoned.
This law was about poisoning people and those who were promoting the law were the poisoning lobby. The intention of the law was to poison people. The law therefore established a framework whereby people could be poisoned.
It is a hard language and at first some people were hesitant to use this language. The Church and the doctors groups didn’t use this language, but as the leader of the campaign it was important for Alés to use this language.
In Slovenia they have socialized healthcare, but it is not a very good system. In Slovenia it will sometimes take two to four years to see a specialist. But the law called poisoning a healthcare right.
The law allowed people to by poisoned to death in 20 days while people have to wait sometimes two to four years to see a specialist, but you can be poisoned to death in 20 days. They called this the government healthcare, pension and social reform law. People knew that this was true.
The government published a calculation of the cost to kill people by poisoning and the cost to provide healthcare, social services and pensions for people.
The government calculated that each poisoning will cost 3,000 to 5,000 euro but healthcare, social services and pension may cost 20,000 to 40,000 euro per month. They argued that this was why the government had legalized poisoning.
The group asked who gets the money that is saved from all the dead people? The government gets the money that iss saved from the people being poisoned to death.
Slovenians understood that if this law was not overturned that their lives were at risk. When Slovenians are sick they want to go to the doctor for healthcare not poisoning.
Slovenians said, I paid all of my life into the pension and healthcare system and never used anything and now when I’m older and would need healthcare or need a pension, after paying 30 – 40 years into the system, they will offer to kill me.
They succeeded in turning around the conversation.
When they had TV debates on the referendum the poisoning lobby said that it is not poisoning and they were lying. But they didn’t speak about their talking points, they spoke about poisoning. It was important that they stuck to their talking points, even though the poisoning lobby tried to make them speak about other things.
They only had a few key talking points and they stuck to them. It is not easy on a TV show or debate to stick to your talking points but you have to do it. As soon as you start talking about their talking points you will not win.
Since Slovenia was not the first country to legalize therefore they didn’t need to imagine what would happen. They presented actual evidence of what is happening in other countries, such as Canada.
It was very helpful that Alex Schadenberg regularly sent information and helped them during the campaign. The arguments and information was very important for them because if they didn’t have information the other side could claim whatever they wanted, but they were able to use actual information and prove it.
Because of the regular information that they received, they led the “International” arguments campaign about what is happening in countries that have legalized.
They responded by saying, don’t tell us that all of these things will not happen because this is what is happening, not only in one country, but also in the other countries that have legalized it. It was not that it may happen, but that it is happening right now.
It is important that you have real arguments not just potential arguments about imagined scenario’s. They were careful to use actual facts.
Their arguments may seem simple but it was not easy to stick to their talking points because the media tried to pull them away from their talking points. It was very important to stick to the plan.
In Slovenia they proved that it was a good decision to stick to their talking points all of the time. They didn’t let the poisoning lobby pull them away from their campaign.
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