Colombian Constitutional Court decriminalizes medically assisted suicide

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – On May 11, Colombia’s Constitutional Court decriminalized medically assisted suicide, in which, unlike euthanasia, it is the patient who executes the action to end their life.

With six votes in favor and three against, the court decided to legalize this procedure after considering a lawsuit filed by the Laboratory of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (DescLAB).

The lawsuit was admitted by the Constitutional Court on September 1 of last year and sought to declare the conditional conformity of the second paragraph of Article 107 of the Penal Code that establishes penalties of between 32 and 108 months of imprisonment to whoever “effectively induces another to suicide, or provides effective assistance for its realization.”

“When the inducement or aid is aimed at putting an end to intense suffering resulting from bodily injury or serious and incurable illness, a prison term of 16 to 36 months will be incurred,” adds the challenged article.

In that line, DescLab’s objective is not that “assisted suicide is practiced by anyone in any case,” but that the Court decided that “when a medical professional assists another person to end his or her life under certain conditions, he or she will not receive criminal punishment”.

“Both euthanasia and medically assisted suicide have the same purpose, to cause the death of a person who meets the legal requirements. The difference is the physician’s role and who ends up causing the death,” the information added.

Colombia was the first country in Latin America to decriminalize euthanasia and is one of the few in the world where it is legal after the Constitutional Court in 1997 consecrated dignified death as a fundamental right in the case of terminal illness when the patient suffers great pain, requests it voluntarily and a physician performs it.

According to the Ministry of Health, only 178 euthanasia procedures were performed in Colombia from April 2015 to October 15, 2021.