First modification:
The South American country, where euthanasia has been legal since 1997, becomes the first nation in the region to allow physician-assisted suicide. After a vote of six judges in favor and three against, the Supreme Court decided to repeal a section of the criminal code that punishes with up to several years in prison, who assists a suicide.
It is a historic decision for Latin America. On Thursday, May 12, the Colombian Constitutional Court decided to legalize physician-assisted suicide.
The decision is the result of an appeal filed by the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Laboratory (DescLAB), in which the second paragraph of article 107 of the Penal Code is challenged, which establishes sentences of up to several years in prison for those who “incite effectively encourages another person to commit suicide, or assists him or her to commit suicide”.
“When the incitement or aid is intended to end intense suffering resulting from bodily harm or serious and incurable disease, a prison sentence of 16 to 36 months will be incurred,” the article states.
But the Court reversed this paragraph and chose to decriminalize assisted suicide, provided that the patient has “expressed his free, informed and unequivocal consent to this end”, suffers “bodily injury or a serious and incurable disease” and is “subject to a physical and psychological pain incompatible with their sense of dignity”.
Camila Jaramillo and Lucas Correa @DescLABcol They are the lawyers who sued before the Court and today obtain the legalization of medically assisted suicide. In this talk, Correa explains the ruling, criticizes the Ministry of Health and Congress, among others.https://t.co/gBIVuLYx7q
– Monalisa (@AlejaBonilla) May 12, 2022
The “assistance in dying” will also have to be provided by “a health professional”, since the Court considered that “the doctor is the one who has the best technical, scientific and ethical tools to guarantee the safeguarding of human dignity in this procedure”.
“The doctor who assists a person in intense suffering or serious illness and who freely decides to dispose of his own life is acting within the constitutional framework,” the Court ruled.
“Scientific advances must be used altruistically and in solidarity with those who are in a state of extreme health and wish to die with dignity,” he concluded.
A strict framework and implementation that is often hampered
According to the Colombian Foundation for the Right to Die with Dignity (DMD), the difference between euthanasia and assisted suicide “lies essentially in the person who administers the lethal drug.”
“In the case of euthanasia, it is the health personnel who supplies the medication that causes death, and in the case of assisted suicide, it is the patient who applies the product that the medical professional gives him,” he explains. the NGO.
Although euthanasia has been legal in the country for 25 years, this practice is strictly regulated and fewer than 200 people have been able to resort to it since it was legalized in 1997.
In July 2021, the Constitutional Court extended the right to euthanasia to patients who are not terminally ill, but who are victims of “intense physical or psychological suffering resulting from bodily harm or serious and incurable disease.”
However, whether for the terminally ill or the severely suffering, euthanasia remains rare in practice.
Last October, a clinic suspended the euthanasia procedure for a patient, Martha Sepúlveda, who suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a type of progressive paralysis.
The cancellation at the last moment caused a great controversy in the country. The medical commission, which had authorized euthanasia, revoked its decision after estimating – in reference to a televised interview given by Martha Sepúlveda – that she was “in better health than the one initially communicated by her and her family.” Martha Sepúlveda finally won her case and was euthanized on Saturday, January 8.
With the decision to legalize physician-assisted suicide, Colombia joins countries such as Switzerland, the Netherlands, Canada and Spain.
Elsewhere in Latin America, there is legislation in Mexico that allows patients or their relatives to request that life not be prolonged by artificial means, while in Uruguay, Parliament is debating a bill on euthanasia.
with AFP
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