Colombia Court Legalizes Euthanasia
THE CONTROVERSIAL DECISION comes after a Bogota attorney sought charges for mercy killing on par with those for murder. Instead, Columbia's highest court ruled the opposite.
BOGOTA, Colombia - Colombia's highest court has approved the mercy killings of terminally ill people who give clear consent, making Colombia the only country in the Americas to legalize euthanasia.
The ruling elated right-to-die advocates but angered the Roman Catholic Church in this predominantly Catholic nation.
"No one can authorize the death of an innocent being, whether it's a fetus or embryo, an adult, a child, an elderly person, the terminally ill or someone in pain," said Monsignor Alberto Giraldo, president of the ruling bishop's conference of Colombia's Catholic Church.
In a 6-3 ruling late Tuesday, the nation's Constitutional Court decided that no one can be held criminally responsible for taking the life of a terminally ill or grievously injured person who has offered clear and precise consent.
"This is going to draw conflict. This will be argued. The ethical and moral debate is just beginning," said Antonio Barrera Carbonell, chief magistrate of the Constitutional Court.
Derek Humphry, author of "Final Exit," said Colombia's two-decade right-to-die movement has existed longer than that of any other nation in South America.
The decision came on a case brought by a Bogota attorney, Jose Euripides Parra, who opposed an article in Colombia's 1980 penal code that provides far softer jail terms for mercy killing than for murder.
Parra sought tougher charges for anyone accused of mercy killing, Barrera said.
Under existing Colombian law, anyone convicted of mercy killing faces six months to three years in jail.
Barrera said it is up to judges to determine on a case-by-case basis whether the victims were indeed terminally ill and had stated a willingness to die.
"The court ruled in the abstract," he said. "Obviously, the ruling has to be understood as a message to the legislative branch to pass laws on the matter."
He said the judges read Colombia's 1991 Constitution to mean that the nation's 37 million citizens are free to die with dignity as well as live with dignity.
The world's only voluntary euthanasia law was adopted by Australia's Northern Territory last year but was struck down in March after five people committed suicide.
Doctors in the Netherlands may perform mercy killings within strict legal guidelines, but euthanasia is technically illegal.
In the United States, federal courts have blocked a voluntary-euthanasia law approved in a 1994 referendum in Oregon.
In Florida, a man dying of AIDS is fighting before the Florida Supreme Court for the right to a physician-assisted suicide.
In the past, the court has recognized the right of some dying people to refuse life-supporting measures.
A Michigan physician known as "Dr. Death," Jack Kevorkian, has helped 52 people to die, vowing that criminal charges would not stop his crusade to permit physician-assisted suicide.
Kevorkian has been acquitted in three trials involving five deaths.
The Colombian magistrates who dissented said the high court entered the realm of lawmaking, instead of sticking to judicial review.
One dissenting justice, Jose Gregorio Hernandez, told the Radionet network that the majority ruling operated under the "erroneous premise that each person is the owner of his own life."
"No one should be able to take the life of another," he said.
Barrera said, however, that the majority concluded that Colombia's Constitution protects "a free internal space in every human being where the state cannot interfere."