Cuba paves the way for euthanasia with approval of new health law

2023-12-22 21:53:36

“The application of valid procedures that end a person’s life” will be “regulated in a specific Law for this topic”

The Cuban Parliament approved, this Friday (22), a new health law that recognizes the right of Cubans “in an agonizing or terminal phase” to decide that their life is not prolonged artificially or by applying valid procedures to die in a “worthy”.

An article of this new law, which will only come into force when the Legislature approves a rule for its application, “recognizes the right of people to have access to a dignified death, through the exercise of end-of-life determinations, which may include limitation of therapeutic effort, continuous or palliative care, and valid procedures that end life”, according to the text approved unanimously in the plenary of the National Assembly of Popular Power.

This procedure will be aimed at “people with chronic degenerative and irreversible diseases, with intractable suffering, who are in an agonizing or terminal phase of life, or have suffered injuries that put them in this condition”.

“The application of valid procedures that end a person’s life” will be “regulated in a specific Law for this topic”, which the Ministry of Health must propose when “conditions are created” in the country, adds the rule.

For the president of the Cuban Society of Civil and Family Law, Leonardo Pérez Gallardo, this law “legitimizes a right that had been claimed” during the debates prior to the approval, in 2022, of the Family Code, an advanced legislation, which included the same-sex marriage and surrogate pregnancy, a practice popularly known as ‘surrogacy’.

In Latin America, only Colombia decriminalized euthanasia, in 1997. The Parliaments of Ecuador, Uruguay and Chile debate projects in this regard, while in Mexico there is the so-called “die well” law, which authorizes the patient or their family to request that his life is not prolonged by artificial means.

The new health law, which replaces one in force since 1983, includes new provisions for the transplantation of organs, tissues and cells, and maintains the right to terminate a pregnancy, as well as assisted reproduction techniques.

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