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Colombia becomes first Latin American country to decriminalise assisted suicide

BMJ 2022; 377 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.o1219 (Published 16 May 2022) Cite this as: BMJ 2022;377:o1219
  1. Luke Taylor
  1. Bogotá

Colombia’s Supreme Court voted to decriminalise assisted suicide on 11 May, making it the first country in Latin America to allow medical professionals to help end the lives of their patients.

Doctors will now be allowed to administer life ending drugs to patients with serious and incurable conditions that are deemed to prevent them from living a dignified life.

“This is a decisive step for our country to consolidate itself as one of the most advanced in the world when we talk about the right to die with dignity,” said Lucas Correa-Montoya, research director at the human rights advocacy group DescLAB which opened the suit against the government that led to the ruling.

Euthanasia, when a medical professional ends a person’s life with the …

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