LISBON, Portugal — When Pope Francis flies into Portugal next month, he’ll find a country gripped by a fight over the right to die that’s pitting Catholic conservatives against left-wingers backing the Socialist government.

Parliament is considering two bills that would legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide.

“Society and the law should allow each of us to decide on the end of our lives in accordance with our values and principles, just as during the rest of our lives,” said João Semedo, a medical doctor, former co-leader of the Left Bloc party and a driving force behind the euthanasia legalization campaign. “Preserving our dignity until the end of our lives is a substantial humanitarian right and the law has to protect that.”

Parliamentary debate on the issue started in February. Supporters hope the left-wing majority in the Assembleia da República will ensure passage of legislation that would allow doctors to assist terminally ill patients who want to speed their end.

However, the issues cut across political boundaries. The two main centrist parties are divided and likely to allow members a free vote. Health care professionals are also split. Opponents promise to rally public opinion to block the legalization of euthanasia.

“Left-wing forces are trying to take advantage of the situation in parliament to force this through without a proper debate in society,” said Isabel Galriça Neto, director of palliative care at Lisbon’s Luz Hospital and a lawmaker with the conservative CDS-People’s Party.

“The impetus for this is not coming from society, it’s being driven by politics,” she said. “This is a retrograde move. A modern society does not treat its most vulnerable members in this way, by saying the only solution for those who are suffering is death.”

Portugal was a bastion of Catholic conservatism under the long dictatorship overthrown in 1974. Since then it’s shifted toward liberal social positions. Abortion laws were liberalized in 2007 after approval by a national referendum. Three years later, Portugal became the fifth EU nation to legalize same-sex marriage.

After elections in November 2015 that voted in a left-wing majority in Portugal, parliament has approved laws to grant gay couples equal adoption rights, waive mandatory counseling requirements and medical payments for women seeking abortion, legalize surrogacy and widen access to assisted parenthood.

The moves went through without widespread protests from conservative opponents. This time, anti-euthanasia campaigners say they will make a stand.

“We will demonstrate. We’ll keep going, on and on,” promised Sofia Guedes, long time anti-abortion activist and co-founder of the STOP eutanásia campaign group. “Our struggle will keep growing as a civil movement.”

Guedes said her group is building international ties, including with the Brussels-based European Institute of Bioethics and France’s Alliance VITA, which helped mobilize mass demonstrations in a failed attempt to block the legalization of same-sex marriage there in 2013.

“In the past, we haven’t been organized, we’ve had many small groups and we’ve always been on the defensive, behind the game,” Guedes said. “Well this time with euthanasia, we want to do the opposite, to be ahead of the curve … We’ve got many people on our side: doctors, nurses, jurists — many, many people who are enthusiastically behind us.”

There are doubts about their ability to rally opposition. A demonstration outside parliament as the debate got underway in February drew only a few dozen protesters.

“The Portuguese are very moderate, so I think this will move forward,” said Álvaro Beleza, former deputy leader of the governing Socialist Party and director of hemotherapy at the Santa Maria hospital in Lisbon.

“There was more opposition to abortion. I think the majority in this case is more tolerant because everybody has somebody in the family who has lived with these issues,” added Beleza, a high-profile supporter of the pro-euthanasia campaign. “The Catholic right has less and less weight in Portugal.”

The Socialist Party’s policy setting National Commission voted in March to approve euthanasia, but the party is expected to allow lawmakers to take a free vote, and some are expected to vote against.

There’s concern in the party that support for euthanasia could alienate voters in more socially conservative rural districts ahead of nationwide local council elections scheduled for October. 1.

Prime Minister António Costa performed some adroit fence-sitting this month in an interview with Rádio Renascença, a broadcaster close to the Catholic church. “I know I would not vote against, I don’t know if I would vote in favor,” he said.

The main opposition party has yet to take an official position. Although most lawmakers from the center-right Social Democratic Party (PSD) are expected to vote against the measures, several prominent members are in favor and a sizable minority could support the bill in a free vote.

On the far left, the two parties backing the minority Socialist government in parliament have taken different approaches.

Although the Left Bloc is pushing for legalization, the Portuguese Communist Party — which has more rural voters — has taken an ambivalent approach. In the last vote on a so-called “fractious” social issue, the PCP joined with the conservative CDS-People’s Party and most PSD lawmakers to vote against the bill legalizing surrogacy.

Like the political parties, doctors are divided. Beleza and Semedo — who both say their own battles with cancer helped shape their pro-euthanasia position — are among the organizers of a petition for health care professionals that has secured more than 300 signatures in support of legalization.

However, the head of the Portuguese Medical Association and his five predecessors are among those to speak out against legalizing euthanasia.

“As a profession, doctors have the objective of treating illness; accompanying patients; keeping them alive; and never, never to consider killing a patient, because this would go against our understanding of medicine,” said Carlos Martins da Rocha, president of the Association of Catholic doctors. “Those defending this measure have a political project to remove Catholic influence in society. It’s a step toward paganization.”

Galriça Neto, the doctor and conservative lawmaker, said the euthanasia debate is a distraction from a lack of investment in the public health service’s treatment of terminally ill patients. “Seventy percent of patients are unable to receive the palliative care they need,” she said. “We’re talking about tens of thousands of Portuguese people.”

Although the draft law submitted by the Left Bloc limits euthanasia to cases of patients suffering from “terminal injury or incurable and fatal illness, and in lasting and unbearable suffering,” Galriça Neto worries the law could lead to euthanasia becoming more widespread.

“Look at the reality in countries like Holland and Belgium, where you can see that in the name of freedom of choice, thousands of people are killed every year,” she said. “There are people with dementia, people with depression, and with mental problems who are killed by euthanasia. You can’t say this is something favorable for society.”

The Netherlands and Belgium legalized euthanasia in 2002. Luxembourg followed in 2009. The latest official figures recorded 6,091 cases of euthanasia in the Netherlands in 2016 and 2,022 in Belgium in 2015.

Other countries, including Germany, Sweden and Austria, permit so-called passive euthanasia, where life-supporting treatment can be stopped at the request of the patient. Switzerland allows assisted suicide — helping patients administer life-ending drugs themselves — and draws foreigners seeking to end their lives. This month, a U.K. court allowed a challenge to the country's ban from a terminally ill man on assisted dying to proceed. A German court ruled in March that, under extreme circumstances, people should have legal access to drugs to end their own lives.

Portugal’s President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa has appealed to political parties to hold off on intensifying the euthanasia debate until after the pope’s visit.

Beleza says terminal patients shouldn’t have to travel abroad for help ending their suffering.

“At the moment, only the rich have access to it, only those that can afford it can deal with it by going to Switzerland,” he said. “I think every European state should adopt this right and give everybody access to it.”

Activists on both sides of the divide were doubtful the visit of Pope Francis on May 13 will influence the debate. The pontiff is flying in to the shrine at Fatima in central Portugal, a focal point for Catholics where many believe the Virgin Mary appeared to local shepherd children in 1917. A million pilgrims are expected to join the pope for the centennial celebrations.

Portugal’s President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa has appealed to political parties to hold off on intensifying the euthanasia debate until after the pope’s visit.

A practicing Catholic, the head of state has accepted the need for a “deep and ample debate on the issue,” but is anxious to avoid harmful divisions within Portuguese society.

Veteran leftist politician Semedo said fears of the issue undermining national unity are unfounded.

“Differences of opinion are not divisions or factures. It’s democracy at work,” he said. “Portugal is a mature democracy; the Portuguese are a tolerant and democratic people. This discussion will strengthen the community.”