Uruguay becomes the first country in Latin America to legalize euthanasia

Legislators in Uruguay have legalized euthanasia, with the senate passed a law allowing it, following the lead of the Chamber of Representatives, which did the same in August.

Key Takeaways:

• The Uruguay senate voted to pass a law legalizing euthanasia. Its Chamber of Representatives also passed the bill in August.

• The bill, which seeks to establish a "right to euthanasia," now awaits the signature of President Yamandú Orsi.

• If signed, the law would allow euthanasia for adults who are in the end stage of a chronic illness or experiencing "unbearable suffering" from the illness, though they are not close to death. According to reports, the illness from which they are suffering could be psychological.

• The bill does not allow a person to commit assisted suicide by self-administering drugs to end his or her life; instead, it allows a "healthcare professional" to kill that person.

The Details:

The Uruguay senate passed the Dignified Death bill in a 20-11 vote after a 10-hour debate.

According to the Associated Press, "The legislation permits euthanasia, performed by a healthcare professional, but not assisted suicide, which involves a patient self-administering a lethal dose of prescribed medication."

According to the BBC, Uruguay often sets the tone for other Latin American nations, with a history of passing laws legalizing same-sex marriage, abortion, and marijuana well ahead of other countries.

If this bill is signed by President Yamandú Orsi, Uruguay will become the first country in Latin America to actively pass a law allowing physician assisted suicide. Colombia and Ecuador have each legalized euthanasia through Supreme Court rulings.

President Orsi has not yet signed the legislation, but his political coalition has been promoting the initiative. After the Senate voted in favor of the bill, people watching shouted out cries of "murderers!" in response.

The bill states that every person has a "right to euthanasia.... so that their death occurs in a painless, gentle manner that respects their dignity..." The conditions to qualify for euthanasia are that the person is a legal adult, considered mentally competent, has the "terminal stage of an incurable and irreversible illness" (no time frame is given)," or due to an incurable and irreversible illness or health condition, is enduring "unbearable suffering" and "a serious and progressive deterioration in their quality of life..." This would include individuals with psychological conditions including depression.

There is no waiting period required.

The European Institute of Bioethics noted that under the bill, "death by euthanasia will be considered a natural death." It even defines "death with dignity" as "the right to die naturally, in peace, without pain, systematically avoiding artificially prolonging the patient's life when there is no reasonable hope of improvement."

The Uruguayan Bishops' Conference released a statement condemning the vote afterwards as promoting a culture of death.

In a country with a high suicide rate, with serious difficulties in addressing the issue of mental health, this law goes against the value and dignity of human life and puts us on a risky path of normalizing the search for death as a solution to life situations that can be addressed in other ways.

... Dying with dignity means dying without pain or other poorly controlled symptoms; dying in one’s natural time, without life being unnecessarily shortened or prolonged; dying surrounded by the love of family and friends; dying with the opportunity to have been adequately informed, choosing, if possible, the place (hospital or home) and participating in all important decisions that affect one; dying with the spiritual support one needs.

... as the Church on pilgrimage in Uruguay, we want to continue working to protect life and its dignity, as is also recognized by our Constitution and the several international treaties our country has signed.

Zoom Out:

The Catholic Church stood in strong opposition to the bill. Daniel Sturla, the archbishop of Montevideo, told the Catholic News Agency that the bill, "instead of contributing to valuing life, contributes to thinking that some lives are disposable, and that is why we believe it is fundamentally bad."

Suicide should not be celebrated as a 'right' for one group of people and a tragedy for others. No one should be encouraged to end his or her own life, regardless of their current health status. Saying otherwise indicates a desire to see certain individuals die.

In addition, it is impossible for one person to judge another's level of suffering, which means that any adult living with any chronic health condition could request euthanasia and potentially be approved based on their own idea of suffering. Furthermore, a person's so-called "right to euthanasia" conflicts with a doctor's right to conscientiously object to participating in euthanasia, as the European Institute of Bioethics argued.

Although the law allows medical professionals to object to participating, the hospital or facility must then find a replacement to ensure the person's death.

There's also the disturbing fact that death by euthanasia is not guaranteed to be a peaceful way to die; reports have surfaced of individuals taking days to die, and that the portrayed image of peace is misleading. A study in the medical journal Anaesthesia found that long, painful deaths from assisted suicide and euthanasia are common; a third of patients took 30 hours to die, while four percent took seven days to die.

In addition, a person is given a paralytic drug that makes them appear peaceful to the observer, but in reality, depending on the drugs used, the person could actually drown to death. As previously reported by Live Action News, pentobarbital, which has been used in the majority of assisted suicides in Oregon, is known to cause pulmonary edema, where the lungs fill with fluid, causing the person to essentially drown in their own secretions. Yet the paralytic given alongside pentobarbital makes it impossible for anyone watching to realize that the patient is suffering. In addition, experiments with assisted suicide and euthanasia revealed that one cocktail was “burning patients’ mouths and throats, causing some to scream in pain.”

The Bottom Line:

As with such laws in other nations, Uruguay's law is likely to expand to include a wider range of individuals with an array of suffering types. It will also open the door to abuse of vulnerable individuals who deserve true respect and dignity at the end of their lives or in their personal suffering — not to be told they are no longer valued or worthy of life and offered suicide as health care.