NEED TO KNOW
The End: Uruguay Chooses To Allow The Right To Die
URUGUAY
A Uruguayan woman suffering from the terrible, debilitating degenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) recently visited lawmakers in her country’s capital of Montevideo. She was attending in support of legislation that would legalize euthanasia in the South American country. The woman, confined to a wheelchair, her condition worsening, did not want to suffer anymore, she recounted to CNN.
“I am getting worse too slowly, I would like this to end,” she said. “I can’t do anything on my own…I have trouble breathing, sleeping…am in pain. I want to know that I can end this when I choose to.”
Opposition politicians like Rodrigo Goñi sympathized with the woman’s plight but did not think the legislation was the answer.
“To thousands of Uruguayans who are suffering unbearably today, to thousands of Uruguayans who today feel like a burden, who are tired of living…who are in the most fragile situation, this Chamber…tells them that it has a solution for them, tells them that it has a solution to this unbearable suffering: to cause their premature death,” said Goñi, according to Latin America Reports.
Clergy in the predominantly Catholic country call the proposal unethical. No doctor, they said, should ever seek to kill their patient, even when the patient approves, wrote Vatican News. Other religious leaders argued that ending anyone’s life prematurely was by definition unnatural and wrong.
Following a highly emotional debate, however, a majority in the lower house voted to decriminalize assisted dying, reported Reuters. Senators in the upper house are now expected to support the so-called “death with dignity” measure, too.
While other Latin American countries permit assisted dying, no other has enacted legislation explicitly allowing euthanasia “by adults with full mental capacity who have been diagnosed with a terminal, incurable and irreversible illness that causes unbearable suffering and severely diminishes their quality of life,” wrote United Press International.
The law is relatively liberal, allowing euthanasia at any time, for example, while other countries like Britain mandate that anyone seeking an assisted death must expect to have a life span of six months or less, according to Live Action, a pro-life news outlet.
Around 62 percent of the public backed the legalization of euthanasia.
President Yamandú Orsi supported the bill, MercoPress reported. “There is a complex philosophical background, where not only ideology but also science plays a role,” he said. “The discussion process has been very productive, and the changes that have been made are very necessary.”
Uruguay, which was one of the first countries in South America to approve abortion and gay marriage, has a strong liberal tradition and may lead the region on this issue, too, observers said.
For example, while Colombia and Ecuador decriminalized assisted dying after court battles, neither created a comprehensive law to regulate it as Uruguay did. Meanwhile, Chile’s assisted-dying bill is stuck in its legislature.
In Uruguay, Eduardo Cánepa, brother of Pablo Cánepa, who is trapped in his own body with an undiagnosed condition and is unable to see, speak or do anything for himself, said he was relieved after the vote. His brother wants to die.
“I don’t want people to die,” he told the Economist. “I want people to be able to choose.”
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