Colombia allows assisted suicide for the sick


This is a first in Latin America. Colombia’s Constitutional Court on Thursday authorized drug-assisted suicide for the sick, under the supervision of a doctor. “The doctor who helps a person in the throes of intense suffering or serious illness and who freely decides to dispose of his own life acts within the constitutional framework”, ruled the Court.

By a vote of six judges against three, the Court thus repealed an article of the penal code punishing from 12 to 36 months any person providing aid to suicide, and “preventing a doctor from providing the necessary aid to a person who, in exercise of personal autonomy, chooses to (…) die with dignity”.

Colombia, where euthanasia has already been legal since 1997, thus becomes the first country in Latin America to authorize assisted suicide for patients suffering from a serious or incurable disease: the patient will now be able to administer a lethal product, under the supervision of a doctor who no longer risks any penalty. “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.

Strictly supervised euthanasia in Colombia

According to the Colombian Foundation for the Right to Death with Dignity (DMD), the difference between euthanasia and assisted suicide “basically lies in the person who administers the lethal drug”. “In the case of euthanasia, it is the health personnel who administer the drug that causes death, and in the case of assisted suicide, it is the patient who administers himself the drug that someone someone else gave it to him”, explains the international NGO.

Colombian legislation, however, continues to punish up to 9 years in prison “whoever incites or helps” to end the life of a person in “intense suffering” due to bodily injury or illness.

Euthanasia is strictly framed in Colombia, and less than 200 people have had recourse to it since legalization in 1997. In July 2021, the Constitutional Court had extended it to patients who are not terminally ill, but victims “of intense physical or psychological suffering resulting from bodily injury or serious and incurable disease”.



Source link -124