(LifeSiteNews) — Uruguay’s recently passed euthanasia law has taken its first life.
As Live Action reports, a 69-year-old woman from the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo died by assisted suicide on May 22. She had suffered from terminal cancer.
Lawmaker Federico Preve celebrated the news, stating that it was “a very important, symbolic day for the country.”
“This person was able to choose to die in peace. They were able to choose to pass away in accordance with their own convictions,” he stated.
Despite characterizations to the contrary, the process of assisted suicide can be much more painful than it is often portrayed. Some of the drugs used involve paralytics, which means that a person can look peaceful but actually drown in their own bodily secretions.
“Advocates of assisted dying [suicide] owe a duty to the public to be truthful about the details of killing and dying,” Dr. Joel Zivot, an associate professor of anesthesiology and surgery at the Emory School of Medicine, has previously explained. “People who want to die deserve to know that they may end up drowning, not just falling asleep.”
Uruguay became the first Latin American country to allow euthanasia via the so-called “Dignified Death” law, which was passed last October and permits euthanasia committed by a healthcare professional, as opposed to a self-administered lethal injection, as is allowed in Australia, New Zealand, and certain U.S. states.
It notably does not require a waiting period before death is induced and does not require those who seek death by euthanasia to be “terminally ill,” as mandated by the euthanasia laws of several other countries.
Two doctors must judge that the person seeking euthanasia is “psychologically fit enough to make the decision.”
Uruguay’s status as the first country in Latin America to legislate in favor of euthanasia reflects its overwhelmingly secular makeup. Over half of its population identify as “nones” – that is, atheist, agnostic, or religiously unaffiliated.
It is considered the most secular country in the Americas and notably banned any mention of God in oaths of office in the early 20th century. In 1909, all religious instruction was banned from state schools. Religious symbols including crucifixes were removed at the time from public hospitals, and Christian holidays were rebranded in a secular manner: Christmas is known as “Family Day,” and Holy Week is known as “Tourism Week” in the country.
Uruguay was the first country in the world to legalize marijuana for recreational use in 2013 and legalized homosexual “marriage” and abortion around the same time.
In the 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II confirmed the Catholic Church’s constant and universal teaching on the sanctity of human life, declaring:
The deliberate decision to deprive an innocent human being of his life is always morally evil and can never be licit either as an end in itself or as a means to a good end. It is in fact a grave act of disobedience to the moral law, and indeed to God himself, the author and guarantor of that law; it contradicts the fundamental virtues of justice and charity.