Colombia takes medically assisted death into the morally murky world of terminally ill children

The Globe and Mail

Stephanie Nolan

Colombia decriminalized medically assisted death in 2015, the first country in Latin America to take the step, but it went much further last May with a regulation that made the procedure available to children.

It was a particularly striking decision in a socially conservative country where almost 80 per cent of people identify as religious Roman Catholics and where the population of evangelical Christians is growing rapidly; the churches, which vocally oppose euthanasia, are a powerful political force.

Providing assisted death to children is a controversial subject even in the field of palliative care. . . [Full text]