Uruguay legalizes euthanasia

The Legislative Palace of Uruguay. / Credit: Coquimbo58, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

ACI Prensa Staff, Oct 16, 2025 / 14:41 pm (CNA).

On Wednesday, Oct. 15, Uruguay’s Senate passed the Death with Dignity bill, which opens the door to euthanasia in the country.

Following a favorable vote by 20 senators (out of 31 present), the bill, which had previously been approved in August by Uruguay’s lower house, will go to the office of President Yamandú Orsi, a member of the Broad Front, the political coalition that promoted the legislative initiative.

Orsi can sign the bill into law or veto it, either entirely or partially. 

The measure approved by the Senate would allow any person over the age of 18 in Uruguay who “suffers from one or more chronic, incurable, and irreversible pathologies or health conditions that seriously impair their quality of life, causing unbearable suffering” to have access to euthanasia.

With this outcome, Uruguay would become the first country in South America to legalize euthanasia through a legislative process. Countries such as Colombia and Ecuador have opened the door to this practice through judicial mechanisms.

Bishops lament law that promotes ‘culture of death’

In a statement released after the Senate vote, the Uruguayan Bishops’ Conference said that “this law promotes the ‘culture of death.’”

“In a country with a high suicide rate, with serious difficulties in addressing the issue of mental health, this law goes against the value and dignity of human life and puts us on a risky path of normalizing the search for death as a solution to life situations that can be addressed in other ways,” the Uruguayan bishops pointed out.

Reiterating a message released in June of this year, the bishops asserted that “every human life appears before us as something unique, unrepeatable, and irreplaceable; its value is independent of health status, ethnicity, sex, culture, socioeconomic status, or any other circumstance.”

“Dying with dignity means dying without pain or other poorly controlled symptoms; dying in one’s natural time, without life being unnecessarily shortened or prolonged; dying surrounded by the love of family and friends; dying with the opportunity to have been adequately informed, choosing, if possible, the place (hospital or home) and participating in all important decisions that affect one; dying with the spiritual support one needs,” they emphasized.

The prelates said that “as the Church on pilgrimage in Uruguay, we want to continue working to protect life and its dignity, as is also recognized by our Constitution and the several international treaties our country has signed.”

“We are convinced that sharing our moments of greatest human weakness can become a great opportunity to discover together the transcendent and profound meaning of our lives,” the bishops noted.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.