The country was the first in Latin America to decriminalize the practice. It is also legal in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Canada, Spain and New Zealand.
Colombia is the only country in Latin America where euthanasia is legal, the rest only have laws or regulations in their health codes that endorse the voluntary suspension of treatments or equipment that keep the vital organs of a patient functioning.
The issue of euthanasia returned to the headlines in the region after a few days ago in Colombia it became known that Martha Sepúlveda, a 51-year-old Colombian who suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, was going to receive it, but it was soon canceled. before.
Sepúlveda was going to be the first person in the country to receive the procedure without having a terminal illness, but the Interdisciplinary Scientific Committee for the Right to Die with Dignity of the medical center where he was being treated “unanimously concluded to cancel the procedure” at determine that “the termination criterion is not met as had been considered in the first committee” that evaluated his case.
In Colombia, it is defined as terminal patient to any person who “is a carrier of a serious disease or pathological condition, which has been accurately diagnosed by an expert doctor, which shows a progressive and irreversible nature, with a near fatal prognosis or in a relatively short term, who is not susceptible to a curative treatment with proven efficacy, which allows modifying the prognosis of near death; or when the therapeutic resources used for curative purposes have ceased to be effective, ”says the Ministry of Health.
Sepúlveda had received a green light from the Colombian justice system. On July 22, the Constitutional Court authorized the coverage of the fundamental right to die with dignity, also known as euthanasia, to non-terminal patients. Previously this procedure was only enabled for people with terminal illnesses.
Before it was established that only terminally ill patients over 18 years of age could request it, or in turn, it was also valid in cases in which the relatives of patients who are unconscious or unable to express their desire request it, but always and when the person has left it expressed in a prior will document.
Federico Redondo, Sepúlveda’s son, has assured that “they are willing to fight for the dignity of their mother until the last consequences, since their decision has not changed at all because of that event.”
Faced with the setback suffered by the decision, lawyer Jesús Albrey González stated that there is no statutory law in the country that regulates the fundamental right to die with dignity through euthanasia and that there are many legal loopholes.
Is it possible that a procedure like this can be canceled just one day before? That, for example, is not regulated. And it is necessary to discuss it ”, he says, adding that“ dying with dignity in Colombia is a fundamental right. And that gives it a rank of constitutional protection and priority. So you have to urgently legislate on this issue, “he emphasizes.
Colombia was the first country in Latin America to decriminalize euthanasia, and together with the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Canada, Spain and New Zealand they are the only ones where euthanasia is allowed. In the US it is authorized in at least five states: Oregon, California, Washington, Montana, and Vermont.
In 1997, the Colombian Constitutional Court established a dignified death as a fundamental right in the event of a terminal illness, but it only became law in 2015. Since then, 157 procedures have been carried out. BBC.
However, the right to what many call “to die with dignity” is still a true taboo in which little progress has been made in recent decades in Latin America.
For Juan Sebastián Medina, a lawyer specializing in Human Rights, the fact that euthanasia does not register greater progress in countries of the region would be linked to the fact that religious beliefs are still deeply rooted in society and the lack of empathy that society may have .
Martha Villafuerte, director and founder of the National Family Ecuador Network, disagrees and says that the terms moral and ethic they are quite misrepresented, as if they were blockages or impediments.
Some nations grant concessions for specific cases, but they also make it a crime for a family member or friend to participate in the assisted death of a person, even if they have given their consent. LatinAmerican Post.
Regarding health codes or laws that endorse the voluntary suspension of medical treatments, these appear in countries such as Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile.
Mexico created the Advance Will Law in 2008. Argentina, in 2012, approved the Law of Dignified Death, which allows terminally ill patients to reject the possibility of undergoing surgery, treatment or resuscitation to prolong life.
In Brazil, the Federal Council of Medicine also endorsed the voluntary suspension of medical treatments or equipment; and in Uruguay and Chile, patients also have the possibility to decide whether or not to undergo a certain health treatment in the case of terminal illness.
In the rest of the countries there are no formal regulations on the subject.
“We have a person who says ‘I don’t want any more medicines’, but that does not imply that he will change his life situation, he will continue to have pain and so on, and surely the suffering will be very great”, highlights Medina, and he says he is opposed to the fact that this desire not to have access to medicine, that “self-definition of the person” is considered valid, and not “saying ‘I don’t want to live anymore, I can’t anymore'”, in the case of terminal illnesses .
Medina comments that it is important “to understand that, when we go towards legislation on issues such as abortion or euthanasia, what is being done is to think of a future country where there are people who do not have to die from a poorly practiced abortion or people who prefer to endure all the pain that is part of a disease.
However, he mentions that in countries like Ecuador “it is serious that, although the State has been separated from the Church for a long time, public policy decisions and the laws and constitutions themselves have a moral burden on who has been elected as legislator, such as President, and this unfortunately has a great impact on everyone’s life. “
“We forget the dignity of people and that is what we have to work on,” he says.
For his part, Villafuerte says that advances in the decriminalization of euthanasia are something that worries him, since he considers that “society is moving towards a culture of disposal.”
He comments that in euthanasia “a patient makes a choice under an act of resignation, an act of hopelessness, of depression,” and adds that if the person reached the point of requesting euthanasia it is because he has not had enough medical help or the support from the country.
“Prevention is not being addressed, the strengthening of solutions, paleative care … let’s go to the cause, let’s not focus on filling ourselves with false solutions for the consequence,” he says.
In the case of Ecuador, Villafuerte says that the Constitution must be strengthened through legal instruments, such as the Comprehensive Organizational Code of the Family, which she herself presented in January 2019 in the National Assembly, and stresses that it is a tool that “ includes the strengthening of paleative care ”, keys to avoid having to consider euthanasia. (I)
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