SUMMARY

Physician-assisted suicide, like euthanasia, embraces several ways of putting an end to someone’s own life, in certain circumstances. When the action is carried out by the own person counting on the medical assistance, it is called physician-assisted suicide; when it is the doctor causing the patient’s death by request of the last one, we call it euthanasia. In both assumptions, the patient must assemble certain health features and, specially, he/she must be able to make the request that asks for others to help him/her die, for which he/she must have full knowledge and capacity for decision-making. These requirements, sharply described in this article, are completely relevant when it comes to defining the actions of euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide of the homicide.

In our country, like in many others, the penalization of the conducts that assist suicide, in any form, is still current, although the penal code itself introduces extenuating circumstances for those likely to be acting from compassionate motives and by explicit request of the patient. This article advocates for depenalizing suicide assistance and euthanasia if these actions are carried out with full respect to the fundamental human rights, a major one among them being the explicit will, thus the crime qualification should persist both for the induction of suicide and the so-called involuntary euthanasia.

Notwithstanding, some societies from our cultural environment have advanced towards depenalizing euthanasia or the physician-assisted suicide. The article focuses on this matter regarding these countries: Oregon (USA), Belgium, Holland and Switzerland, in which, one or several ways of suicide assistance are not legally punishable if they are carried out agreeing to their respective legal ordinances. In some of them, besides, non governmental organizations have appeared to report, advice and, in the case of Switzerland, actively collaborate to suicide assistance, given very strict conditions.
But, on the other hand, it shows the suicide assistance not only as a matter of rights or options for suffering people because of their health status, one that leads them to a strongly diminished life quality, but it also introduces the idea that the suicide assistance must be considered as well, as a compassionate, empathic action towards these suffering people, which adds a first rate humanistic element. Nothing further, then, from economical considerations or supposedly eugenesic motivations that have nothing to do with this article’s proposals.