On October 15, after five years of negotiations in Congress, Uruguay became the first Latin American country to legalize euthanasia, i.e., the practice of taking medical action to end life at the request of a patient. As with all such laws throughout the world, the measure is intended as a way to eliminate suffering among terminally ill patients. Euthanasia is currently decriminalized in Colombia and Ecuador as well, but in those cases, that has been the result of court decisions rather than changes in legislation.
The long discussion that preceded the legalization of euthanasia in Uruguay is a good example of the fierce resistance that the practice still generates. There are still many people who oppose the right to end one’s own life. They use a range of arguments, which go from religious contentions on the sanctity of life to worries about the irreversibility of the decision in the face of diagnostic errors.
But libertarians should welcome the legalization of euthanasia. A libertarian case for the legalization of euthanasia is that if individuals are to be the masters of their own bodies, they must be able to make whatever decisions they think suitable for themselves in all realms. Just as the right to self-ownership must encompass the right to live, it must also include the right to die with dignity if one so chooses.
In the case of Uruguay, the institutionalization of euthanasia is intended to ensure accountability. As per the legalized procedure, from now on, any patient who requests to be euthanized will first need to get a doctor’s counsel and approval, and then that of a second doctor or a medical board in case of disagreement. The patient will then undergo another interview, and finally, they will have to ratify their decision before two witnesses.
Uruguay’s legislation will now go further than that of any US state, since it will allow doctors to administer lethal medication on behalf of their patients. This procedure, known as active euthanasia, is legal in countries like Canada, Belgium, and the Netherlands but banned in all jurisdictions across the United States. Passive euthanasia, on the other hand, requires the patient to self-administer the lethal medication—this is legal in 11 states and the District of Columbia.
Legalizing euthanasia does not imply that governments should in any way promote it, but merely that the range of options available to individuals should widen, or that we should at least recognize what is already a reality: suicide. In practice, outlawing euthanasia only makes us turn a blind eye to the people who already commit suicide when facing incurable disease or intolerable pain. People already act according to their own will, even when they are supposedly not allowed to.
Even if some questions remain as to how to move from theory to practice in specific cases, what matters about euthanasia is providing individuals with more autonomy over their own bodies. As Cato’s Jeffrey A. Singer reminds us:
It’s essential to remember the principle at the heart of this movement: self-ownership. While difficult questions remain—especially around mental illness and decisionmaking capacity—those complexities shouldn’t obscure the fundamental right of mentally competent individuals to make deeply personal decisions about their own bodies, including how and when to end their lives.
Author’s note: In the post above, I stated that “[l]egalizing euthanasia does not imply that governments should in any way promote it.” That includes taxpayer funding or direct provision of the practice or mandating private insurance companies to cover it as part of patients’ policies. Doing so inevitably violates the consciences of some who are forced to pay for or effectively sanction the practice of euthanasia. More fundamentally, governments have no legitimate role in the provision of health care.