Euthanasia: The obligation to kill?

In Uruguay, euthanasia is not yet legal, but the bill is advancing rapidly in Parliament, with the intention of being approved in both chambers before the end of the year.

Driven more by emotional slogans than by deep and rigorous analysis, it has the support of legislators from several political parties, including Partido Colorado, Frente Amplio, Partido Nacional, and Partido Independiente.

To die with dignity: a semantic contradiction

The text under discussion, far from being up to the ethical, medical, and legal complexity involved in ending a human life, relies on slogans such as "to die with dignity", a phrase that, strictly speaking, is impossible: dignity is an attribute of the living and is extinguished with death.

As Judge Alejandro Recarey warns, life can be dignified until the last breath, but death itself is not.

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Legalizing euthanasia is not just enabling a medical procedure, but imposing it. The bill obliges healthcare providers to carry it out or finance it, and to replace doctors who present conscientious objection.

Primum non nocere

In Recarey's words, recognizing euthanasia as a right means "accepting its logical flip side: the obligation to kill".

This means subordinating medical ethics to legislation, breaking with historic principles such as the Hippocratic Oath, which establishes that the doctor must relieve pain and suffering, but never cause the patient's death.

Meanwhile, while medical tradition has been based on protecting life as an inviolable value, this new legal dynamic reverses that mandate, replacing the commitment to care with authorization to eliminate.

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Language that disguises reality

The legislative text defines euthanasia as "natural death" and embellishes it with the formula "dignified death." This semantic trick hides reality by avoiding its legal classification as homicide.

Strictly speaking, maintaining dignity until the last breath is one thing, and supposing that death itself can be dignified is quite another.

Social impact: "dignified" lives and expendable lives

Legalizing euthanasia introduces a cultural change that classifies lives as valuable or expendable. In the Netherlands, the criterion of "unbearable suffering" has been expanded to include depression, loneliness, or tiredness of living, and up to 40% of cases are not reported.

In Canada, people have chosen to die due to poverty or lack of housing. In Belgium, one third of procedures are performed without a formal request.

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The last line of defense

These examples confirm that, once the door is opened, it is almost impossible to close it. Euthanasia relativizes the absolute value of life and normalizes the idea that some lives are not worth living.

Uruguayan society faces a decision that goes beyond a medical procedure: it redefines the value of human life.

What is presented today as an act of compassion will tomorrow be the legitimization of death as a social, economic, or political solution.

Legalizing the current bill implies a dangerous change: it legitimizes the subjective decision regarding who deserves to live and who can be discarded, opening the door to social control that threatens to dehumanize and undermine the most essential dignity.