Colombia authorized Thursday, May 12, drug-assisted suicide for people who suffer from serious or incurable illnesses, under the supervision of a doctor. A first in Latin America.
By a vote of six judges to three, the Constitutional Court of Colombia repealed an article of the penal code punishing from 12 to 36 months any person providing assistance in suicide, and “preventing a doctor from providing the necessary assistance to a person who , in the exercise of his personal autonomy, chooses to (…) die with dignity”.
“The doctor is the one who has the best technical, scientific and ethical tools to guarantee the safeguard of human dignity in this procedure,” said the Court. “The advances in science must be used in an altruistic and supportive way towards those who are in an extreme state of health and who desire a dignified death”, she concluded.
The Court clarified that those eligible for assisted suicide must be diagnosed with a serious or incurable injury or illness causing intense physical or mental pain that they deem “incompatible with a dignified life.”
Colombian legislation, however, continues to punish up to 9 years in prison “anyone who incites or helps” to end the life of a person in “intense suffering” due to bodily injury or illness, apart from of the legal framework, i.e. without the supervision of a doctor.
The right to euthanasia legal since 1997 in Colombia
“This is a decisive step for our country to consolidate its position as one of the most advanced in the world in terms of the right to die with dignity”, reacted to Reuters Lucas Correa, research director of DescLAB. , a laboratory of economic, social and cultural rights.
In Colombia, euthanasia has already been legal since 1997, and the country now becomes the first in Latin America to allow assisted suicide. The difference between euthanasia and assisted suicide is who administers the lethal drug. During an assisted suicide, it is the patient who injects the product directly, under the supervision of the doctor, whereas in the context of euthanasia, it is the medical personnel who take care of it.
In July 2021, Colombia had also extended the right to assisted suicide, which only 200 people have used since its legalization, by opening it to patients who are not terminally ill, but who nevertheless suffer “intense suffering physical or psychological damage resulting from bodily injury or serious and incurable disease”.