MEXICO - After a two-year debate, the Mexican Senate has passed a law obliging doctors to obey the wishes of patients with incurable diseases who want to have life-prolonging treatments suspended.
Patients and their families will now be allowed to check themselves out of hospital and die with dignity in their own homes, said Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) legislator Lazaro Mazon, one of the authors of the bill.
The Senate passed the bill back in June but the lower house insisted that only patients with a life expectancy of less than six months should be allowed to suspend their treatments.
The Senate voted unanimously in favor of the law, with only one abstention.
Under the law, doctors are still obliged to provide patients with pain killing medicines and psychological help.
National Action Party (PAN) legislator Ernesto Saro Boardman, president of the Senate health committee, said the measure made economic sense as doctors often push expensive treatments on patients, despite knowing full well that their condition is incurable.
Saro said the law would also “free up equipment” in hospitals. She cited the case of a young man admitted to hospital with a collapsed lung being unable to be put on a respirator because none were available. He subsequently died and it was later discovered that several respirators were being used by elderly patients in their final stages of life.
Patients and their families who wish to end life-prolonging treatment will have to make their request to doctors in writing and can rescind their decision at any time.
Legislators decided not use the term passive euthanasia in the final bill, so as not to “scare” people, said Mazon.
Contrary to many other western nations, polls in Mexico suggest a majority of citizens are opposed to the idea of assisted suicide, or allowing a doctor or other person to administer a lethal agent to a dying person.
The Catholic Church has given its approval of the law but remains strongly opposed to any form of voluntary euthanasia.
According to several sources, certain forms of euthanasia are legal in Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington.
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