In a regional first, Uruguay passes regulation permitting euthanasia

Uruguay’s senate has handed a regulation decriminalising euthanasia, placing the South American nation amongst a handful of different international locations the place significantly ailing sufferers can legally receive assist to finish their lives.

The transfer made on Wednesday (October 15, 2025) makes Uruguay the primary nation in predominantly Catholic Latin America to permit euthanasia by way of laws. Colombia and Ecuador have decriminalized the apply by way of Supreme Court choices.

In Chile, left-wing President Gabriel Boric just lately revived a push for the approval of an euthanasia invoice lengthy stalled within the Senate.

Fierce debates and spirited activism across the apply has gripped the area lately.

“Public opinion is asking us to take this on,” Sen Patricia Kramer of Uruguay’s governing leftist coalition advised lawmakers within the nation’s capital of Montevideo.

The regulation, which moved ahead in suits and begins over the past 5 years, cleared its remaining hurdle on Wednesday as 20 out of 31 senators voted in favour. The decrease home accredited the invoice in August with a big majority. All that is left is for the federal government to implement the laws.

During the talk, senators from the ruling Broad Front coalition delivered impassioned defences of the best to die, evaluating the euthanasia motion to the legalisation of divorce and same-sex marriage.

“We all imagine and really feel that life is a proper, each in well being and in illness, however it ought to by no means be an obligation as a result of others do not perceive such insufferable struggling,” Sen Daniel Borbonet stated after quoting testimony from Uruguayan sufferers with irreversible medical circumstances.

Most opposition to euthanasia in Uruguay got here from the Catholic Church. Before the vote, Daniel Sturla, the archbishop of Montevideo, known as on Uruguayans “to defend the reward of life and to keep in mind that each individual deserves to be cared for, accompanied and supported till the tip”.

But secularisation has eroded resistance to the apply on this nation of three.5 million individuals, which bans any point out of God in oaths of workplace and calls Christmas “Family Day”.

Officials hailed the regulation’s passage as reinforcing Uruguay’s repute as among the many most socially liberal nations within the area. The nation was first on this planet to legalize marijuana for leisure use and handed pioneering laws permitting same-sex marriage and abortion over a decade in the past.

“This is a historic occasion, which locations Uruguay on the forefront in addressing deeply human and delicate points,” stated Vice President Carolina Cosse.

The laws permits euthanasia, carried out by a healthcare skilled, however not assisted suicide, which entails a affected person self-administering a deadly dose of prescribed medicine.

Unlike legal guidelines in U.S. states, Australia and New Zealand limiting euthanasia to these with a life expectancy of not more than six months or a yr, Uruguay units no closing dates. It additionally not does require a ready interval, and permits anybody affected by an incurable sickness that causes “insufferable struggling” to hunt assisted dying, even when their analysis will not be terminal.

Uruguay requires that these looking for euthanasia to be mentally competent.

Although the regulation doesn’t outright ban euthanasia for these with psychological circumstances like melancholy, it requires that sufferers get two docs to rule that they’re psychologically match sufficient to make the choice.

Unlike Belgium, Colombia and the Netherlands, Uruguay won’t permit euthanasia for minors.